


Things We Lost in the Fire

by enigma731



Series: Broken Things [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Captain America: The Winter Soldier Spoilers, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Mission Fic, POV Female Character, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Spy Natasha Romanov
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-22
Updated: 2015-01-13
Packaged: 2018-01-20 09:48:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 30,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1506041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enigma731/pseuds/enigma731
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D., two things happen: HYDRA pins a target on Natasha's back, and the long-lost Clint Barton shows up in her living room. </p><p>(Loosely a part of the Broken Things series, but can be read as a stand-alone.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is a loose sequel to Mission Bells and lives in that universe, but there's no requirement that you read the rest of the series in order to understand this fic. Also, this is my first multichapter in a few years, and it's equal parts awesome and terrifying to be back at it. I hope you all enjoy.
> 
> Thank you to [andibeth82](http://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/pseuds/andibeth82) for beta, and [samalander](http://archiveofourown.org/users/samalander/pseuds/samalander) for support and thinky thoughts. Thanks also to all my cheerleaders -- I'm getting to have a small army of you, and I'm incredibly grateful!

When the hearing is over and she’s said goodbye to Steve, Natasha goes home. 

Not to the mostly-empty rowhouse she keeps on Capitol Hill, not to any of her bolt-holes scattered around the world. Instead, she drives back to the familiar glow of the New York skyline, to the loft with its smooth wood floors, with her overcrowded bookshelves and the eastward-facing windows that compromise security but let her feel the sunrise on her face. She’s been keeping a piece of her heart here lately, dangerous as she knows it is. 

She doesn’t hesitate as she opens the door, just unlocks it and walks inside before doing a quick sweep of the place. After that, she shrugs out of her jacket and sits back on the couch, trying to relax the muscles in her shoulder that have grown stiff with bracing the still-sore wound just below her collarbone. Somewhere in the back of her mind, instinct tells her to take more time, to search more thoroughly for bugs. She quashes it, though, reminding herself that paranoia is futile now, that the world knows all of her secrets and that she can’t really hide, so she ought to just move on with living. And that’s the point, really--that’s the only way to win now. 

It takes a moment for the television to come on when she snatches up the remote and hits the button, almost as if it knows somehow that she’s been gone, that she’s been neglecting it. For a while she watches news--the ubiquitous footage of the Helicarriers going down, the panels of purported experts trying to make sense of the S.H.I.E.L.D. information dump, her own face, jarringly cropped, looking like a mug shot. The show has another expert on, this one claiming to be a psychiatrist, drawing a profile from her leaked personnel file. Natasha listens long enough to pick out phrases like “manipulative,” “domineering,” and “narcissistic” before she grows tired of the man’s incompetence and starts flipping channels. 

It’s been two days since the aborted launch of Insight, since S.H.I.E.L.D. went to hell, and yet most channels have still suspended their regular coverage in favor of more repetitive pseudo-analysis, as if they will ever actually know how close they’ve come to total disaster. There’s some sort of a game show on, though, where contestants are required to perform tasks like walking barefoot through a pit of scorpions. There’s also a reality TV show where plastic-faced women hurl vitriol at one another, and a soap opera where a young blond man appears to have a very glamorous case of amnesia. Natasha watches that for a few minutes, mentally chastising the show’s creators, before switching off the television and sitting in the silence.

* * *

_It takes nine days after the Battle of New York before Clint finally breaks, his back pressed to the tiled wall of an unfamiliar hotel bathroom, the cold spray of the shower beating down and his shoulders shaking as she holds on. This is when she finally decides to let him in, to give him the key to the last layer of armor around her heart, to tell him that she loves him beyond all reason, in spite of every instinct that has kept her alive this long._

_Eleven days after New York, Natasha watches him at the range, shooting arrow after arrow, not quite as steady as usual but better than he’s been. She takes him home to her bed afterward and sees him through his nightmares. This is when she begins to think that things might be all right, that she might actually be capable of healing rather than causing pain._

_Fourteen days after New York, she wakes to find Clint sitting on her window sill framed by a perfect sunny morning. This is when he tells her that he is leaving._

* * *

Natasha isn’t consciously aware of falling asleep, and later won’t even remember lying down. 

She’s in a long, twisting hallway, the darkness around her nearly complete, though she can still find the walls on either side with her arms outstretched. It makes her feel exposed, vulnerable, moving forward like this, but she doesn’t have a choice so she presses onward. 

The end of the path comes so abruptly that she actually stumbles, finding herself confronted by the cool glass of a mirror, looming up out of the dark with an unnatural glimmer of yellow light. It’s only enough to see her silhouette, her body a distorted entity of shadows and illusions. She isn’t sure how long she stands there, trying to make sense of it all, before she realizes that the light is getting stronger, recognizes the familiar _crackle_ and _whoosh_ of a missile approaching.

Natasha sees the fireball in the reflection, the explosion growing blindingly bright in the glass as it draws closer, filling the corridor behind her with no escape. Only then does she manage to make out her own face, her lips sticky-wet with blood and her eyes filled with terror.

She wakes awash in panic, a scream evaporating before it ever leaves her throat, years of nightmares and survival training extinguishing that instinct. Instead she pulls a pillow into her lap, fists her hands white-knuckled in the fabric, and listens to the harsh sound of her own breathing in the night.

* * *

_”I can’t do this,” says Clint the moment she meets his eyes. It’s a vague statement but she knows immediately what he means by the way his tone steals the air from her lungs, makes her head swim like a punch to the gut._

_“You said that before,” she says stiffly, sitting up in bed and trying to focus on taking his argument apart, taking the poison out of his fears like she has so many times before. This is something she knows how to do, she tells herself. “You were wrong.”_

_“No,” he insists, his voice catching in his throat in a way that sounds like it must be painful. “I wasn’t. I wanted to believe you. Wanted to think I could go back to the way things were, but I can’t. Everything is a reminder. Everything, Natasha. I wake up with you here, and he’s in my head, telling me to kill you. I pick up my bow, and he’s right there. Every second I let go of my thoughts just a little, it’s like--I’m right back there, trapped. I have to leave. I have to go somewhere there’s nobody to hurt.”_

_“That’s normal,” she insists, aching for him through the panic and anger. “I told you, you have to give it time.”_

_He shakes his head frantically, like he’s trying to get the memories out. “I can’t.”_

_“Then trust me,” she says, more forcefully. “Trust me to get you through it.”_

_“You have no idea what I need!” he explodes, his feet hitting the floor heavily as he shifts his weight and stands. The terror at his own reaction is immediate and painfully visible; she watches as he fights to get control of himself again. “This is why I have to get away.”_

_“If you honestly think this is still just about you,” she growls, then shakes her head when the rest of the words refuse to come. If he thinks that, what can she do? She has already given him every honest part of herself and isn’t willing to compromise that, to lie if her truths are not enough to keep him here._

_“You’re right,” says Clint, the fight going out of his eyes just as quickly as it’s come. “It isn’t.” But there’s a dark edge to his voice, and she doesn’t feel any relief at his concession._

* * *

The idea is to maintain some sort of routine, Natasha decides, when she’s passed a day and a night in fitful attempts at rest. She doesn’t have any orders now--won’t for the foreseeable future--so she gives herself a mission: act normal. Stay calm. Defy the chaos that’s threatening to overwhelm her.

When morning comes for the second time since leaving DC, she gets up, takes a shower, and dresses in the sweats and t-shirt she would have worn to the gym at S.H.I.E.L.D., once. The only food in her apartment at this point comes out of either a wrapper or a can, so she pulls her wet hair back under a baseball cap and walks to the grocery store. It’s surreal, seeing her face all over the tabloid stand for the second time in two years, her face that she’s tried to keep anonymous, tried to hide behind an endless parade of covers. _The Black Widow Unmasked_ proclaims the title closest to her. Natasha bites back a bitter laugh, because _masks_ have never been her thing. 

She turns away from the rack of venomous gossip and tries to focus on her task, filling a basket with fruits and vegetables. Healthy things. The kind of food people eat when they still have a future to be invested in. _Normal_ , she reminds herself, adding a bag of powdered sugar to the load anyway. 

Nobody bothers her as she makes her way through the checkout. Nobody stops her, or catches her eye, or even pauses to look a little closer underneath the brim of her hat. 

Maybe the world hasn’t changed so much, she thinks. Maybe she has never occupied as much space in it as she believed.

* * *

_”I’m sorry,” Clint whispers, much later, his mouth soft and his tears hot against the bare skin of her abdomen. He breathes the words over and over again like a chant, like a benediction. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I love you. I’m so sorry.”_

_“Stop,” says Natasha, when she doesn’t think she can bear it any longer. She sits up, tugs him toward her to kiss the apologies from his lips. “Stop. Just be with me.”_

_He nods into her neck, making a quiet sound of need as he buries his cock inside of her. Natasha holds him as he moves, her fingers pressing little bruises onto his back and shoulders, like she might be able to brand him as her own, might be able to reclaim him from the monsters inside of his mind. He cries out when he comes, shuddering against her until there’s nothing left but exhaustion._

_She falls asleep to the failing light outside, and his arms slack and heavy around her waist._

* * *

When she gets home again, Natasha bakes scones to go with her tea. It’s been a long while since she’s taken the time to make anything from scratch, to make anything indulgent just for herself. But the discipline of measuring ingredients, the repetitive motions of mixing things are oddly calming. She uses a little more force than necessary as she cuts butter into flour, watching the little clumps forming and reforming. 

She doesn’t remember learning how to bake, though she thinks it was part of her original training, probably for a cover. She’s played mistress enough times, played the grounded homemaker and the high society trophy wife. She could do it again, she thinks, could find some innocuous man to occupy her time. Or she could be a career woman instead, the kind who works in a non-secret office and wears endless variations of tailored suits. She could leave society altogether, could live in the mountains, could survive entirely on the resources of her own making. 

She could be any of these people, if she wanted to. She could be a dozen more.

None of them seem worth it, though. The effort feels hollow without an objective.

* * *

_Natasha wakes before dawn, the bed empty beside her. She knows by the shot of adrenaline in the pit of her stomach that Clint is gone, that he hasn’t changed his mind after all, that in the end she is not enough to keep him here. For a moment she considers going after him, tracking him down and having this fight yet again. But it isn’t worth it, she decides--if he wants to leave, if he wants to be alone so badly that he feels the need to sneak out in the middle of the night after using her trust against her--well, she isn’t going to spare him the energy of a rescue. Sitting up slowly, she thinks that her movements feel strangely raw, her limbs heavy with a peculiar mixture of anger and grief. A large part of her wants to get up and find something to punch, but the rest of her feels paralyzed in this moment, in the sudden realization that she is alone. In the end she just pulls her knees up to her chest and holds onto them, staring at the windowpanes until the darkness outside begins to lift._

_As the sun rises, her eye is caught by a tiny glint of metal on the bedside table. Leaning over, she sees for the first time the thin silver chain with the little arrow pendant. It’s sitting on top of a piece of paper, the words ‘I’m sorry’ hastily scrawled in Clint’s now-shaky hand. There’s something else below that, too, scratched out. Narrowing her eyes, she thinks she can read ‘love you’ through the inky lines, a stab of hot rage running through her at the echo of the previous night._

_She picks up the note and methodically shreds it into pieces too tiny to grasp before dropping them into the trashcan beside her bed. She leaves the necklace sitting there to greet the sun every morning for two weeks before she finally relents and puts it on._

* * *

When the walls of her apartment begin to feel oppressive, Natasha laces up her sneakers again and goes for a run under an afternoon sky filling with dark thunderclouds. The storm isn’t here, though, not quite yet. She leaves her guns and knives and stingers at home, daring the world to come for her and make a move. 

Nothing happens until she pauses in front of a large house with a playground set in the front yard, bending to stretch and re-tie her left shoe, which is growing loose. There’s a bin of trash on the curb, mostly the usual empty containers and remnants of food. But a flash of color catches her eye just as she’s about to take off running again. 

Turning back, she sees the unmistakable tiny plastic replica of her own body, her own uniform, the head just barely sticking out of the trash. There’s more, she realizes, leaning closer: two more variations of the action figures she only grudgingly authorized, and crumpled pages of a child’s artwork. Tossed out, she imagines, by a girl who’s lost faith and had her illusions shattered. Or perhaps by a mother, in protection of her daughter, parents talking in hushed tones of disapproval, glued to the endless news reports. 

Probably for the best, Natasha thinks, though she can’t quite deny the sick feeling of disappointment twisting in the pit of her stomach. She has never been role model material anyway. Now, finally, they know the truth.

* * *

Natasha turns back and heads home when the bloated storm clouds have sagged low enough on the horizon that she can hear a rumble of thunder in the distance and smell the acrid warning of ozone. She reaches her doorstep just as the first warm raindrops start to fall, darkening the pavement around her as she turns her key in the lock and makes her way up the stairs. 

It feels as if the storm follows her, the air of her usual sanctuary just as charged as the outside. She feels the change under her skin, little prickles of tension crawling up the back of her neck. 

Clint is sitting on the edge of her couch in the living room, his hands resting on his bow, which is cradled in his lap as if he might still be ready to bolt at any moment. She’s expected him to look different somehow, to have a new set of scars, or a tattoo, or even a beard. He doesn’t, though. Dressed in a pair of rumpled jeans and a faded black shirt with a rip in the left sleeve, he just looks steady, like always - a few years older, a few more hints of gray in his hair. 

“Hi,” he says quietly, looking up at her as though she’s a beacon in the endless fog. 

“It’s been four days,” Natasha says evenly, because even after two years of silence, a part of her has been expecting him to find her and has expected him to do it more quickly, with all of the news. “I was starting to think you might be dead.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to [samalander](http://archiveofourown.org/users/samalander/pseuds/samalander) for beta! Also thanks so much to everyone who left feedback on the first chapter. Comments make my day. :)

Natasha expects that Clint might flinch at her carefully-chosen words, might crack a little, just in the eyes, the way he always has. She thinks he might apologize. She’s intended the statement as a barb, intended it to hurt, though it’s also the truth. When he’d left, she’d harbored a modicum of hope that he might come back, that he might at least try to contact her somehow. Now she isn’t sure whether it’s a relief or a disappointment, knowing he’s alive and has stayed away by choice.

Clint doesn’t react, though, except to glance down at his bow for a moment. It isn’t a gesture of threat, she knows all too well; it’s a reflexive check, a reassurance that the thing he loves most is still there. It’s the kind of look she used to catch him shooting in her direction, when he thought she wasn’t looking.

“Well?” she presses, irritation scrabbling at the place behind her breast bone. 

“I started looking as soon as I heard the news,” he says finally, his voice still oddly flat, matter-of-fact, like the air between them doesn’t feel as though it could ignite at any moment. “Went to Marseille first, then London. Figured you’d be holed up somewhere. Didn’t realize you were so close the whole time.”

Natasha barks out a bitter laugh. “Well, you’ve been gone a long time. Apparently there’s a lot you don’t realize.”

“Tasha,” he says, in that particular quiet tone that has always cut through her armor in a way outright force never could. 

“Stop,” she snaps, instantly aware of the danger, aware that it would be all too easy for him to break her like that. She is not prepared to give him that sort of power over her ever again. “You don’t get to talk to me like that anymore.”

He holds up his hands, sighing, as a growl of thunder punctuates her outburst. The storm is finally breaking in earnest, rain sheeting down against the windowpanes. “Fine. What do you want me to say? I came to see if you were okay, if you needed--”

“What?” Natasha interrupts, taking a few steps across the room so that she’s standing even with him. This time he does flinch, ever so slightly, and though she’s intended the intimidation, she still feels its success like a stinging blow. “You wanted to help? You thought I might _need_ your help? Get over yourself, Clint. I’ve never been the one who _needed_ you.” It isn’t true--not even a little, but anger feels safe now, feels like the obvious defense when he showed up here and destroyed her shield of normalcy.

“You’re angry,” says Clint, as though she hasn’t just exploded in his face. He’s steadier now than he was before he left, on the surface, at least. His reaction now reminds her of the maddening impassivity he’d directed at her when she’d first come to S.H.I.E.L.D., when he’d been the most convenient target for her newfound rage at the many losses she’d never allowed herself to feel before. 

“You left,” she repeats. “You ran away. And now you expect me to trust you? For all I know, _you_ could be HYDRA.”

He blinks. “You don’t believe that. You know better.”

“Do I?” Natasha presses, crossing her arms. It’s easy to carry on with the venom, now that she’s begun. “You _left,_ Clint. Turned your back on everything we had. But maybe you weren’t running. Maybe that was a convenient way to get out, to continue your work undercover. You were in New Mexico. We know HYDRA was working on the Tesseract now. Maybe you were a part of that.”

Clint stands slowly, telegraphing every movement as he carefully sets his bow on the couch beside him and closes the distance between them. He isn’t afraid--of her, anyway--and that twists something in her gut she can’t quite quantify. 

“If that’s true,” he says, reaching out so that his knuckles brush her clavicle and very gently catching the little arrow pendant with the pad of his thumb, “then why are you still wearing this?”

Natasha freezes instinctively at the whisper of his skin, the same touch that’s grounded her so many times, pulled her from the depths of her own mind and broken through her shell. She looks up to meet his eyes, the anger and suspicion she’s been clinging to quickly turning to exhaustion instead.

“Because I missed you,” she admits, letting him see the rare honesty in her face, the way she’s worn the necklace as a talisman, the only part of him still within her reach.

Clint makes a soft sound in the back of his throat, a visible shiver running through his body. He doesn’t say anything, just traces his fingers up the side of her neck, rests his palm against her cheek as he kisses her, his other arm wrapping tightly around her waist. Natasha allows it all to break over her then: the crazed rollercoaster of the past week, the ball of flames that’s been haunting her dreams, and the red she keeps seeing at the backs of her eyelids. The headlines of the gossip magazines and the plastic figurine that bears her face in the trash, probably getting soaked in the rain now, covered in rot, in the remains of other discarded poisons. She lets herself feel the hollow ache of his absence for an instant before pushing it away again, letting it propel her as she breaks the kiss, wraps her arms around his neck and leans in close so that her lips brush his earlobe when she speaks.

“This is not you saving me,” she growls, still unable to let the anger go completely. “You don’t get to come sweeping back in and save me.”

His entire body goes rigid for a moment at that, but he doesn’t pull away, doesn’t fight her or run. Instead he nods curtly, his hands firm on her hips. “Tell me what you want me to do, then.”

Natasha lets a thin smile curve over her lips, a bit of cruelty in it that she knows he’ll recognize. “Show me that you missed me too.”

Clint doesn’t wait to be told twice, just ducks his head and kisses her again, nipping at her lower lip before moving to suck a bruise onto the spot below her ear like the shadow of the words he isn’t going to say. She inhales at the tiny spark of pain, nowhere near what she needs for the sort of release she’s craving, but a reminder of what he can give her all the same. He’s already hard against her; she can feel his erection pressing into her abdomen as he pulls her body closer, but he isn’t going to do anything about that yet, all laser focus on her. She’s still in soft yoga pants from her run, and she shoves them impatiently down her hips before remembering to toe off her shoes, kicking the whole mess to the side so that it skids across the floor and hits the wall with a dull thud.

Clint chuckles darkly, pausing momentarily in the path he’s drawing across her throat to look up and meet her eyes. “In a hurry?”

“You’ve been gone for two years and most of the world wants me dead right now,” says Natasha. “ _Hurry_ seems like an understatement.”

He laughs again, his movements looser now like they are when he gets into the field, when he has his hands on his bow. “Well, in that case.”

Clint gets his hands under her legs and lifts, crossing the room in a few long strides until her back is pressed against the wall. Natasha’s stomach drops in surprise for just an instant, but she knows what he’s doing, wraps her thighs around him and braces her arms against his shoulders. There’s a glint of challenge in his eyes as he slips one finger and then another inside of her. She groans, a raw, open-throated sound, and lets her head fall back against the wall as he thumbs her clit, the burst of sensation like coming home. He remembers this, of course, remembers exactly how to keep her hanging in the delicious space between pleasure and pain as he strokes her roughly. She fists a hand in the overgrown hair at the nape of his neck, and bites her own lip when she comes, the coppery tang of blood spreading across her tongue as she shudders. Clint looks up at her again then, searching her face for approval, perhaps for simple reassurance.

“Not bad,” says Natasha, the wish to wound him reasserting itself hotly beneath her skin, warring with the desire to surrender more fully; the need to make him pay for his disappearance clashing with the craving to feel any sort of comfort at his return. She doesn’t give him a chance to react, twists her body and shifts her weight in a way that she knows will take him to his knees.

Clint must be expecting the move on some level, because he doesn’t fall, doesn’t let her go. Instead he goes down gracefully, keeping his hands braced at the small of her back. She doesn’t waste any time kissing him or playing at sweetness, just shoves his shoulder until he gets the idea and stretches out on the floor.

“I am going to fuck you now,” she says decisively, and goes straight for his belt buckle.

“God, yes,” he breathes, the syllables turning to a relieved hiss as she gets his pants down and his cock springs free. 

Natasha sets a pace every bit as fast and hard as he did a moment before, her hips snapping downward and her fingers pressing bruises onto his arms as she fucks him into the floor, wondering whether she intends it as a gift or a punishment. Clint comes with her name on his lips, and something breaks inside of her then--all of the betrayals cutting in deep, all of the lies. The worst of all are the ones she’s told herself, that she is smarter than the rest of the world, that she can be safe. She buries her face against his neck as her whole body heaves with pain, not quite sobs; the tears still refuse to come, though they sting against the backs of her eyes. She is vaguely aware of Clint’s hands on her back, his voice soothing in her ear through it all, of the way she still aches with bitter love for him. 

Clint wraps his arms around her as the harsh breaths that seem to catch on the dam of hurt in her throat begin to abate a little. She allows him to lift her, then, to carry her like one more burden into her bedroom, because she is too tired to continue fighting any of her battles tonight. Natasha peels her shirt off, letting it fall to the floor in a sweaty heap as she curls up bare against the sheets. Clint hesitates for a beat before doing the same, settling in behind her with his arm draped across her waist like an echo of the last time he was present in her life.

“I’m here,” he breathes against her ear, and she thinks he must notice the way her muscles tighten ever so slightly. “You’re okay.”

_Liar_ , she thinks, but she closes her eyes in silence.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to [samalander](http://archiveofourown.org/users/samalander/pseuds/samalander) for beta and [andibeth82](http://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/pseuds/andibeth82) for tireless cheerleading!

Natasha isn’t sure how long she manages to sleep. She isn’t intending on it at all, thinks she’s far too keyed up, far too unsafe to succumb to that sort of vulnerability right now, especially with Clint there. But she’s had too many sleepless nights in the past ten days, too many early awakenings and nightmares. 

It isn’t a dream that rouses her this time, though images of the tunnel and the inescapable ball of flames are still close at the backs of her eyelids. The thing she’s aware of now, as she wakes, is the chill that’s crept over her apartment, the way she’s shivering under her thin sheets. Natasha sits up slowly, groping for the blanket that’s slid down to the foot of the bed. It’s then that she realizes she’s alone, remembers falling asleep with Clint at her back. Her blood goes cold in a way that has nothing to do with blankets, her heart racing in her throat as she tries to swallow down the rush of grief and anger over the fact that he’s gone again. Stupid, on her part, letting him in at all. 

Rain is still sheeting down against the windowpanes, but the sky is light behind the clouds. Morning, she confirms as she glances at the clock on her bedside table: not quite 7 am. She’s managed to sleep through the rest of the evening, through the night. Clint’s discarded clothes are gone from the floor, of course, and she feels a fresh flare of bitterness at that. 

Routine, she reminds herself. The important thing is to maintain the same sort of rigid self-discipline that’s kept her alive this long. She manages to keep her emotions at bay through a quick shower, lets the spray beat down too hot on her back and shoulders, a senseless punishment that at least gives her something to focus on, sharpens her senses out of the haze of exhaustion. 

By the time she steps out, she’s almost calm, at least until she catches sight of her reflection in the mirror. Her face is scarcely visible through the fog so all she can see is a spectral outline, not so different from the one in her dreams. It’s the necklace that takes her by surprise, the little glint of silver a painful reminder of all the mistakes she’s made. She can practically feel the brush of Clint’s rough fingers against her collarbone, her stomach twisting. Natasha sneers at her own image in the mirror as she leaves the bathroom, suddenly desperate to excise the memory of vulnerability, of love from under her skin. She dresses hurriedly in running clothes without another thought to the rain as she pulls on her shoes, lets her disgust with herself propel her out into the living room and toward the door.

“Whoa, going somewhere?” Clint’s voice cuts into the constant drumming of the rain, nearly makes her jump out of her skin. He’s sitting on the couch his phone still clasped loosely in one hand. She’s been so caught up in her certainty of loss that she hasn’t even thought to look for him, has allowed herself to lose all track of her environment. Poor showing for a spy, she thinks. Under other circumstances, this kind of mistake would get her killed. There’s a question in his eyes again, and rage bubbles acidly in the pit of her stomach, quickly dissolving the shock of finding him here after being so certain of a repeat disappearance. She feels hollow, like a shell filled with poison, a bomb ready to explode at any moment.

“Clint, what the hell?” she growls, taking two steps closer, so that she’s standing less than three feet away from him, a space she could cross in a single bound if she wanted to. Another man might tense up, might try to clock her next move, might even reach for a weapon.

But this is Clint, so he does none of that, just slowly sets his phone down on the end table and gets to his feet, hands in the air to gesture calm, surrender. She recognizes that look from years ago, from a half-frozen hovel in St. Petersburg, and it takes all her strength to stop herself from springing at him for daring to act as though he might be able to avoid hurting her now.

“Hi,” he says quietly, when he seems to have assured himself that she isn’t moving for the moment, that it is his turn to speak in this conversation. “Sleep well?”

“You left,” she accuses, ignoring the question. It’s an attempt to placate her, she knows, and she is having none of it right now. 

Clint sighs; clearly he’s been expecting this. “Natasha, you’ve been asleep for more than twelve hours. And you needed it. I didn’t want to wake you.”

“I didn’t mean now,” she snaps, though it’s a lie; her desperation to cling to anger is only spurred on by the rationality of his response. “You _left_. You don’t get to just walk back in here. Get out.”

“You don’t mean that,” says Clint, in that same maddeningly gentle tone, and this time it’s something more than the focus she remembers. His gaze is almost distant, a detachment that reminds her of the look she sometimes sees in Banner’s eyes when he thinks nobody’s watching. “You’re angry that I left, I get that. You don’t want me to do it again. That’s fine. I don’t want to do it again.”

“Don’t tell me what I mean,” she snarls, her voice breaking dangerously on the words as her relief at finding him here begins to overtake her defenses. She closes the rest of the distance between them, puts herself right up in his face and allows her muscles to coil tightly, instinctively, as if she might be preparing to strike.

“I’m not going to fight with you,” he says quietly, still refusing to back up. “You can hurt me if you want to, but I’m not going to give up just because you’re angry. You can be angry. Just let me be here.”

“You left,” says Natasha, for what feels like the hundredth time. “Just--disappeared.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, the sound of his voice a ghost of that last night in her bedroom, when she’d missed the harbinger of his leaving in her own need. “I’m sorry. I love you.” He raises a hand as if to touch her before letting it fall to his side again.

Everything comes crashing in, then, and Natasha bites out a curse as she surges forward, swinging a half-hearted left hook at his chest, an outburst of pain more than a true attack. Clint catches her fist as a sob wrenches roughly from her throat, the tears coming at last.

“I’m sorry,” she gasps, an echo of his words, horror at what she’s just done mixing with the betrayal and loss. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“Hey,” he breathes, his voice still a little raw around the edges, though his hands are steady as he catches her shoulders, guides her down onto the couch and pulls her to his side, his arms wrapped around her and his lips pressed to her forehead.

It’s easy to fall now that she’s let herself tip over the edge, like riding a wave all the way down. Natasha fists her hands in the fabric of his shirt, holds on as the flood of grief shakes her in a way she hasn’t felt since she was a little girl ripped away from her family, a child unafraid of her own vulnerability. She cries for his absence, for the walls she’s built up around her heart, for the life she’s forged only to watch it burn in a sky filled with ash.

“I’m here,” he says again, when her breathing’s started to slow, when every fiber of her being is exhausted and aching. “Let me help.”

“How?” she challenges, though there’s little conviction left in it. “What are you going to do? Go back in time and _not_ leave? Go back further and exterminate every last member of HYDRA that Rogers missed the first time around?”

Clint considers this seriously for a moment before giving her a hopeful look. “I could make you tea?”

The response is so genuine, so authentically _him_ that Natasha can’t help huffing out a short laugh, dropping her head to his shoulder again as a swell of affection rushes over her. “I really thought you might be dead.”

He shrugs, though she doesn’t miss the way his lips twitch with unspoken emotion. “Not that easy to kill. You know, like a cockroach.”

“Charming, too,” says Natasha, her throat suddenly tight again at the realization of how much she’s missed his wry humor.

“So yes to the tea, then?” he asks. “You want breakfast? I’m pretty sure I remember how to do eggs and toast.”

“You have never known how to make eggs correctly,” says Natasha, sitting up a little so he can move if he wants to. He doesn’t, yet. “But if you’re asking to raid my refrigerator, go ahead. Far be it for me to let an intruder go hungry in my apartment.”

“Always such a gracious hostess,” Clint teases, tightening his arm around her shoulders for a moment and kissing the top of her head in a way she might have mocked, once. “Come on. You need to eat too.”

He’s right, she knows, and she nods after a moment, getting to her feet with a shaky breath. Her head is pounding and her mouth feels like it’s full of cotton, but she pushes those thoughts aside, holds her hands out to Clint to help him up. 

She slides onto one of the tall stools at the kitchen counter as he moves through her space, still familiar enough that he doesn’t need her guidance, not that he ever really has. It’s been a long time since she’s let anyone into her home, shared her sanctuary. Not since he walked out, she thinks, but she doesn’t volunteer that, isn’t ready to offer up that part of the hurt, though she suspects he knows anyway. 

He glances over his shoulder repeatedly as he works, pouring the water into her kettle and then breaking eggs into a pan. Natasha wonders whether he’s gauging her reaction or if it’s simply impossible for him to let his guard down, even here and now. His hands shake ever so slightly as he sets a mug and a plate in front of her, and she forces herself to take a bite of the dry toast, the scrape against her throat helping push the panic back down. Clint eats in silence beside her, taking huge, quick bites as though the food might be suddenly snatched away, might vanish. Natasha watches him in her peripheral vision, picking at her own food. It’s difficult to summon an appetite, though she knows she needs the calories, needs the energy. 

“Where have you been?” she asks finally, when he’s finished and she can’t wait any longer.

Clint keeps his eyes fixed carefully on his plate, the muscles in his jaw tight with an emotion she can’t quite read. “Nowhere.”

“Really?” She can’t keep the irritation out of her voice, though truthfully another fight is the last thing she wants. “You ceased to exist? Newly acquired powers you failed to share with me?”

Clint sighs heavily. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

“No, I _don’t_ know what you meant,” she says sharply. “I don’t, Clint. Because I thought we were partners. I thought we were more than that, but you chose to throw it away. So you want to help? You want my trust? I’m going to need a little reciprocation if I’m even going to consider it.”

He takes a rough breath. “I had to get away. You know that. I wasn’t--I wasn’t sure I could control it.” 

Natasha slides out of her chair abruptly, spins so they’re face to face again, scarcely inches apart. “And _where did you go_?” she hisses.

Clint swallows visibly, meeting her gaze like a command. “Iowa. I went--back home to Iowa. If you could ever really call it that.”

She searches his face for a moment, trying to decide whether she believes him. She doesn’t get a chance to respond, though, as the unmistakable shrill tone of her security system’s proximity alarm cuts in, sends Clint stumbling backwards out of his chair in shock.

Natasha ignores his reaction, her own heart pounding as she steps past him to the pantry, where the array of viewscreens normally stays hidden. Activating the monitors, she has time to register the dark figure of a man in a police uniform in the hallway outside. 

An instant later, the door splinters inward with the deafening boom of an explosion and a cloud of smoke.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to [samalander](http://archiveofourown.org/users/samalander/pseuds/samalander) for beta and cheerleading! Sorry this chapter took a bit longer--it fought me the whole way, but I think I won!

Natasha blinks rapidly as the acrid smell of smoke hits her nostrils, knowing she can’t afford to let her eyes tear, can’t afford to lose a moment of awareness. She spares half a second to glance back at the security monitor: just the one intruder, making his way through the smoke with a gun raised. Surely not the only one, she thinks, but currently the only attacker she can see. That makes him the least dangerous; the others could be anywhere--aiming at the windows, on the roof, in the apartments adjacent to hers.

Clint is closer to the door than she is, but he’s already on the ground, using the meager cover of the smoke to move for his bow, still on the couch. Her mind strays to betrayal for an instant, flutters over the possibility that he really could be HYDRA, could have led them right to her. She rejects that thought as quickly as it comes, though, outright refusing to believe it. These are the same goons who attacked Fury on the street, she’s sure of it. 

“They’re not real cops!” she calls to Clint, though she knows it’s giving away any tactical advantage they might have had. Now the man will be aware that they are planning to fight back.

“No shit!” he yells, and then he must manage to get to his bow and quiver, because one of his stun arrows comes slicing through the air, sticking to the wall next to the gunman’s head and immediately letting loose a booming shockwave. The arrow is part of his standard gear; she doubts he’s had time to rig anything custom yet. The man goes sprawling for a moment, though, his gun clattering to the floor. 

Natasha doesn’t wait for any kind of signal, doesn’t wait for a next move from Clint. She crosses the distance in two long strides, picking up the loose gun and shooting the intruder neatly between the eyes before he’s had any chance to recover.

“Nice,” breathes Clint, rolling to his feet. He scoops his quiver off of the couch and pulls the strap over his shoulder, bow still balanced on one arm. The hand by his side is trembling almost imperceptibly, unusual for him, but she chooses not to comment. 

She pauses for a moment to take stock: there’s a smoking, splintered hole where the front door used to be, Clint’s arrow stuck to the wall with a spidery design of cracks spreading outward, and the man lying dead on her living room floor. So much for a sanctuary, she thinks bitterly. So much for routine and moving on. So much for security deposits. It was foolish, perhaps, to think herself so untouchable, to think she could be exempt from Fury’s work rooting out the remaining HYDRA strongholds. There must be others here, she knows. They won’t have sent one man alone, not to attack her in her home. Meanwhile, her gear and weapons are out of reach in the bedroom, carelessness bordering on a death wish on her part. 

“Save it. Cover the door,” she tells Clint, keeping the gun she’s taken as she heads back into the hallway.

She’s half expecting to be ambushed in the bedroom, half expecting her supplies to be gone, for someone to have gone through her things. Nothing happens, though, everything still in its place. Natasha ducks down beside the bed, letting it shield her from the sightline of the window. She hasn’t forgotten Fury being shot straight through the wall, can’t dismiss the possibility of the Winter Soldier being here, still controlled by HYDRA. He’s nearly killed her twice now, and she wouldn’t be surprised if he’s still trying to finish the job.

Her gauntlets are sitting on the nightstand-- _stupid, stupid_ \--and she pulls them on quickly, the metal cold against her skin. There’s a comm link in the left one, she could send a distress signal that will be automatically linked to S.H.I.E.L.D. frequencies. In the past she would have used it without hesitation, would have expected Fury or Coulson or even Sitwell to be listening. Now she pauses, fights down a wave of futility and doubt before pressing the tiny concealed button. No harm in it, she decides. HYDRA already knows where she is and if anyone else is listening...well, she and Clint could use some backup. Abandoning the stolen HYDRA goon’s weapon, she straps on her gun belt and pulls one of her own from its holster before returning to the living room.

Clint’s already put an arrow through the skull of another man, now crumpled to the floor, but three more are emerging over the threshold, spraying gunfire. Natasha steps to the side, flattens her back against the wall. Clint is forced to duck, losing his aim for a moment as he uses the couch for meager cover. The HYDRA grunts are no marksmen; they’re peppering the whole place with bullets--half a dozen burrow into the walls, others into the flimsy fabric of throw pillows, and yet another shatters the long window across the room. Natasha feels a momentary stab of anger at that, raising her own weapon and taking two of the men to the ground. Clint’s managed to get himself into a workable position again by then, catching the last of this wave with an arrow just above the right eye.

“We can’t stay here,” she decides, pushing away from the wall and moving to check the bodies, make sure their threat is actually neutralized. “They’ll just keep coming. They’ll have us trapped.”

“Down!” yells Clint, from over her left shoulder.

Natasha rolls instinctively, only now realizing the shot that took out the window came from _outside_ , that it was aimed at her head. Another mistake: she’s allowed herself to lose track of sightlines during the fight, and of course they have snipers surrounding the apartment, just as she’s suspected. 

Clint drops to one knee as she watches, sends an arrow through the humid air and out the window. A moment later, a crumpled body falls from the roof of the building across the street, terrifying a motorist who’s stopped at a red light. 

Clint gives her a grim little smile. “Guess I’ve still got it.”

“This is not the time for you to be finding yourself,” she growls, though she’s really angry at herself, not him. “They’ll have control of the front entrance for sure. Can you tell how many snipers there are in the back?” They don’t have a lot of time to plan an exit strategy; the next wave of attack is probably already on the way. The fire escape is one possibility, she thinks, though it’s under the destroyed window. Climbing down it might be inviting a bullet to the head.

“Let’s find out,” he answers, dialing something into his quiver. The arrow he nocks has an uncharacteristically large tip, and for a moment Natasha wonders how it’s supposed to be useful at all.

The thing makes it halfway out into the space between the two buildings before it bursts into a puff of smoke. From the explosion, three tiny plastic army men emerge, each with a miniature parachute and each drifting in a different direction.

“Really?” Natasha asks incredulously. She decides she doesn’t want to know how that particular arrow came to be designed and added to his arsenal.

He shrugs. “Good for a distraction. Watch.” 

As if on cue, two bullets take out the parachutes to the right, the little green men plummeting rapidly to the ground. 

This time Clint doesn’t look celebratory, just intensely focused. “Now I know how many there are. And where they’re hiding.”

“Want to share?” asks Natasha.

“One in that window,” he answers, pointing. “One on top of the bank. The one I took out already had the clearest shot, so it’ll take the other two a little longer to aim. You thinking fire escape?”

She nods tersely.

“Then you should go now,” says Clint. “While they’re still off balance from that little display. Just keep moving as quickly as you can. I’ll cover you, then come down behind you.”

Natasha has an instant of apprehension, of an unsettling little voice at the back of her mind questioning whether she’s ready to trust him again with her life. She could refuse, could insist that he go first, or try to fight her way out through the front door. She shoves the feeling away, though, nods at him and silently counts down from three. 

Clint shoots an arrow over her head as she throws herself over the ledge of the window frame, careful to avoid the broken glass still clinging to it. She has a split second to register that he’s set off another diversion, a cloud of purple smoke blooming into the air as she starts to run. The gunfire comes a moment later, but she doesn’t pause to see where it’s from, just keeps moving until she’s made it down the four flights, until her feet hit the pavement and she can use a parked car for cover.

She loses track of what happens next--whether someone throws a grenade or whether it’s one of Clint’s arrows--but an explosion rocks the side of the building, fire erupting from her broken window as he uses his grappling hook to swing to the ground. 

“Let’s go,” he breathes, rolling to his feet right beside her. “Gotta keep moving.”

Natasha doesn’t think twice about that, just takes off at a run. Only then does she realize that Clint is barefoot, must not have had any opportunity to grab shoes during the attack, and he’s trailing bloody footprints down the sidewalk. Too late to do anything about that, though she doesn’t like the possibility of being tracked.

They make it nearly three blocks before Natasha becomes aware of the car following them, a navy blue sedan moving in a way that makes her skin crawl. She doesn’t acknowledge it immediately, though, just keeps going until it cuts them off at the next street corner, peeling up to the curb with a screech of tires.

Natasha raises her gun, is ready to fire when the window rolls down and she instinctively recognizes Maria Hill in the driver’s seat.

“Point that thing somewhere else,” says Hill, cocking her head at the gun, and the irritation in her voice is so familiar that for a moment Natasha feels weak with relief. “You’re the one who called for help. Now get in already.”

* * *

The safehouse Maria takes them to is in the basement of a Stark-owned property, and Natasha resists the urge to think why Tony feels the need for a hidden bunker, when he has a security detail and his suits. It isn’t quite as lavish as she might expect, given its owner, but it is well-equipped and the fact that they don’t have to worry about HYDRA bugs is a definite plus. 

Clint is sitting on the edge of one of the beds in the sleeping area when Natasha looks for him, having spent the past hour talking privately with Hill. It isn’t that she doesn’t trust him, she tells herself. He just doesn’t have the clearance, or wouldn’t, if formalities of that nature still existed at all. Currently he’s got one of Stark’s first-aid kits spread out beside him, a pair of tweezers in one hand as he attempts to extract shards of glass and gravel from the bloody mess on the sole of his foot.

“You two have a good talk?” he asks, and for a moment Natasha isn’t sure whether she detects a hint of bitterness in his voice. 

“Good enough.” She sits beside him, watching him work in her peripheral vision. “Funny how we thought exposing HYDRA would be good enough to take them down. Turns out, the government is more interested in interrogating any S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel they can get their hands on than dealing with the real terrorist organization that’s right under their noses. Makes you wonder if the CIA and military are infiltrated too.”

“Would figure,” Clint says darkly, wincing as the tweezers slip out of his fingers and jab into one of the cuts. “Fuck.” His hand is shaking again, and he doesn’t seem to have made much progress treating his own injuries.

“Give me those.” Natasha snatches the tweezers away from him, moving closer so that their shoulders touch as she starts working on the glass. It goes more quickly with her steadier hand, and she guesses no more than a few minutes slip by before she has his cuts cleaned and bandaged.

“Thanks,” he says quietly, when she looks up to meet his eyes again. He puts both feet back on the floor, but doesn’t move away. 

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, the words suddenly catching in her throat, though she isn’t entirely sure what all she’s apologizing for yet. “I don’t know why--I thought they wouldn’t come after me. Or not like that, anyway. I thought I wasn’t important enough to them, after everything that’s happened. I guess--I thought I could just keep going, somehow.”

Clint smiles, though there’s no warmth in it. “Anyone who thinks you’re unimportant is an idiot.”

“How sweet,” she answers sourly. 

He sighs. “What are you going to do now?”

“Fury’s in Europe,” says Natasha, noticing that Clint doesn’t seem surprised by the news that he’s alive. She probably shouldn’t be telling him this, the voice of her training tries to insist, but she silences it with the fact that he’s just risked his own life to ensure her escape. “Still trying to take down HYDRA. Doing what the official men in charge won’t.”

“And you’re going to join him.” It isn’t a question.

“I didn’t want to before,” she admits, internally cursing her own short-sightedness again. She takes a breath, makes a choice and reaches for his hand. “Now I don’t see how I have a choice, so--Come with me?”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to [andibeth82](http://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/pseuds/andibeth82) for beta!

Fury is in a little town a few hours north of London, at least according to the coordinates Maria provides. Natasha isn’t sure what she’s expected, or what she really believes—whether they’ll find Fury where he claims to be stationed, or if this might simply turn out to be another bread crumb on one of his infamous trails. 

Just the thought of him brings a little twinge of _something_ to the pit of her stomach. It isn’t quite anger, but it isn’t quite grief, either. Disappointment is the closest label she can find for the feeling, she decides as she takes a quick shower in Stark’s basement safe house, preparation for their next few steps. It’s disappointment in Fury, she realizes, a bit surprised at herself, and in S.H.I.E.L.D. Disappointment in his mistrust, in the fact that he kept her blinded to his suspicions until the last minute possible, and until there was no other feasible choice. She wonders if she would have been privy to the information at all, had she not happened to get shot, to get captured by Rumlow and his team. Fury had a part in allowing HYDRA to use her as one of its weapons, though Natasha is not about to absolve herself of that guilt. 

For a moment she lets the rage burn hot in the pit of her stomach, lets herself consider bypassing him altogether and taking down HYDRA on her own. She isn’t that foolish, though. She knows that she needs allies for that sort of job, no matter how much the last few weeks have made her regret trusting anyone.

Clint is in the bedroom when she comes out, and he looks up in surprise, halfway through re-bandaging his foot. It isn’t the first time he’s seen her without a shirt in the past few days, but this time his eyes catch on the scar over her collarbone, the one that’s just starting to settle into her skin, still pink and a little puckered. 

“That’s new,” he says carefully, looking back down before she can meet his eyes. 

“Souvenir, courtesy of HYDRA,” says Natasha, and doesn’t bother to give him any further details, though she thinks she’ll have to warn him about the Winter Soldier’s involvement eventually, will have to tell him what Steve has learned. Now is not the time, though--she isn’t sure how that sort of revelation might affect him after the past two years, and she needs him to be in shape to make this trip with her. 

Clint winces sympathetically. “Thought we established that you’re not allowed to get shot without me.” He seems to realize what he’s said an instant too late, focusing again on his foot and on the floor. 

Natasha says nothing, tries to swallow down the sense of dread she gets every time he slips. Now that she’s gotten over her initial anger at his absence and sudden return, she realizes that she wants him to be whole again, to be the partner she’s come to rely on so much. 

“We need to move out in twenty,” says Natasha, deciding to ignore his comment. “You have everything you need?”

He nods, holding up the baseball cap and glasses Maria has provided to him, ironically similar to the disguise Steve wore, back when she’d still thought this whole mess might have been simple. Getting out of the country will be harder than ever, now that S.H.I.E.L.D. has been labeled as a terrorist organization. Now they’ll have to dodge Homeland Security as well as HYDRA. They’re using fake names, of course, and Natasha still has the digital mask mesh she used to infiltrate the Council, this time doubling her face after a generic brunette from a lipstick commercial. She has a wig, too--long, dark, and curly. That’s the best Maria’s been able to do for them, though, without more notice for Stark to fly in, to work on additional tech for their disguises. Clint will have to make do with the minimal props, with generic khakis and button-down shirt that pulls too tight around his biceps. It’s a risk, undoubtedly, even after he’s been off the grid for two years.

* * *

Natasha knows better than to think it’s safe for them to be seen together, even with her cover, even though she isn’t sure the government even knows Clint is back in New York. Maria arranges to have two separate cars drop them off at the airport, exactly twelve minutes apart—a large enough margin to be safe, but to ensure that they’ll both still make the flight. 

She’s decided that her alter ego, Elizabeth, is young and unemployed, living on daddy’s money while thinking about going back to school. She keeps her eyes glued to the screen of her phone—a cheap burner they’ll ditch as soon as they touch down—as she makes her way through the airport, feigning disinterest as she scans her surroundings. Going through security sends an unusual wave of adrenaline through her, though it’s hardly the first time she’s done this undetected—it’s just that there’s something especially unnerving about being hunted by people she once considered to be her own. Suddenly, she remembers the doll with her face, shoved into the trash, and wonders how many wanted lists that face now populates. It isn’t the face the harried TSA personnel are seeing as she walks through the scanner now, though, offering Elizabeth’s practiced vapid smile.

Clint is already at the gate when she gets there, as planned. He’s sitting in a vinyl-seated chair with his back to the window showing the tarmac, earbuds in, though she’s certain he won’t actually be listening to music. He’ll be far too alert for that, despite the casual slump of his shoulders, the impatient little rhythm he’s drumming on his knee with the fingers of his left hand. 

He looks tired, thinks Natasha, taking a seat at the gate across from their real one. They’ve spent less than twelve hours in the safe house, but she’s managed to get a few hours of sleep, enough to know she’ll have the energy she needs to get through the journey. Clint’s stayed awake, she’s pretty sure, and by her count that means he’s now been without sleep for a little over two days. The sun isn’t rising yet, and won’t before their flight takes off, but it’ll be evening when they arrive and she resolves to make him rest then, no matter what protests he might attempt. She pulls out the phone again and pretends to be reading through very important messages. Clint doesn’t look up or acknowledge her, though she wants to believe he’s aware that she’s made it through, will have been waiting with something like concern. 

She gets halfway to feeling nostalgic about this, to missing the days when she might have complained about flying commercial, given Clint dirty looks for his choice of airport junk food while stealing fries from under his nose, when the call comes to board their plane. They’ve cut it intentionally close, not wanting much time to attract possible interest. Clint stands on cue, his ticket in the first group to board. Natasha keeps her head down, her gaze still directed at her phone for the benefit of anyone watching, and tracks his feet as he disappears up the jetway.

She watches the minutes tick by as other passengers board, carefully gauging the perfect moment to rush to her feet with a theatrical little display of surprise at nearly having missed her flight for all her interest in her non-existent text messages. Natasha is fairly certain she sees one of the gate agents shaking his head in her direction, but she simply shrugs, gives another dumb smile. 

It’s then that she spots the men, and a cold knot coils in the pit of her stomach. There are three of them, standing in a group a few yards away, the closest one leaning against the wall just outside the jetway doors. They’re dressed in suits, which isn’t quite enough to stand out at an airport on its own, but it’s early and the corridors are nearly deserted, everyone either seated tiredly at a gate or moving purposefully toward a goal. These men are just standing, staring a hole through her forehead. 

_Subtle,_ thinks Natasha, glancing around. She’ll be one of the last few passengers to board as it is; not enough time to work through a possible disaster. She runs through the possibilities in her mind. There’s no clear sign that these men are HYDRA—they could be TSA or FBI, for all she knows—but their appearance is raising every red flag in her book. If these men aren’t government, they’ll have needed boarding passes to get through security, just like she did. Worst case, they could follow her onto the plane, and make a scene in mid-air, which would unquestionably put innocents at risk, not to mention ensure her detection and arrest. They shouldn’t be able to recognize her, disguised as she is, but if they have the right sort of scanning tech, they could detect the tiny digital projection array that’s creating her mask. That would lead straight to her like a beacon, and it’s possible HYDRA’s gotten wise to this tactic now that they know she has access to it. 

She has to do something, she thinks, but all the strategies that come to mind would likely result in shutting down the airport, leaving herself and Clint trapped. She could lead the men away, she thinks, but then she would miss the flight. Clint is already onboard, and she has no idea what he really knows about the current situation, whether he’d be equipped to find Fury or to even protect himself. She could create some sort of distraction, could goad one of the men into attacking her, but then there’s liable to be a security lockdown. 

“Doors are closing, ma’am,” says the impatient gate agent from a minute before. “This is your last call.”

Natasha hesitates for a moment longer, then decides she has no choice but to risk it, to go all-in as she’s been doing for the past few weeks. She has to find Fury, to carry this mission forward, and that isn’t going to happen if she lets HYDRA win now.

“Damn,” she tells the gate agent, with a shrug and a toss of her hair. “I was just hoping my agent would call before we took off! Big audition in a few days. I really think this might be the one.”

“Please make your way directly to your seat,” says the agent, scanning her boarding pass.

Natasha pulls her phone out one final time as she steps onto the jetway and hears the doors beginning to close behind her. When she glances back over her shoulder, the men are gone, nowhere to be seen.

* * *

The first hour of the flight passes in disconcerting quiet. There’s no sign of the men on the plane, which sends a fresh prickle of apprehension down the back of Natasha’s neck. She isn’t sure how to read the scene at the gate, whether she’s simply gotten carried away in her own paranoia, or if she’s missing a piece, whether there will be a blind ambush waiting for them on the other side. The fact that she’s ended up next to an empty seat does nothing to assuage her sense of vulnerability, though she’s fairly sure Maria has arranged that purposely. She’s nearly managed to drive herself insane with second-guessing when Clint drops into the chair, seeming to materialize out of nowhere. She jumps. 

“You can’t be here,” says Natasha, refusing to turn her head. “I don’t know you.”

“Right,” Clint agrees, offering her his most winning smile. “But I happen to be alone and bored on this flight, and you happen to be a beautiful young woman with an empty seat next to you.”

She rolls her eyes. “Creep.” Though his presence is a guilty relief, the skeptical voice at the back of her mind insists that it’s a liability. 

“I’m Jason,” he says, offering her a dopey grin and an enthusiastic handshake. It’s too much, too loud, too showy for their current predicament, and she feels a fresh chill of fear. 

“Did you see the welcoming committee at the gate?” she bites out, barely a breathy whisper. 

He freezes for a moment, then shrugs, a movement she recognizes as his conscious effort to force the anxiety back down, to hide behind the security of his trademark humor. “No. But—so what? They’re not here, are they?”

She shakes her head.

“Then they’re not our problem for the next six hours.” He takes a breath. 

“And after that?” asks Natasha, watching the way he tenses again, the way the facade still isn’t quite so perfect as to avoid her detection. 

“We’ll figure it out then,” he promises, finding her hand at her side and squeezing it, out of sight of the rest of the plane. “That’s what I’m here for.”

“Not good enough,” says Natasha, but she doesn’t pull her hand away. Instead she turns to look out the window, into the peculiar illusion of hanging still in the air, though she knows in reality the world is rushing by outside. 

She wonders idly if _this_ will finally be the trip where she doesn’t come home, and watches as a bolt of lightning spindles out from a nearby cloud.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feedback is greatly appreciated! :)


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to [andibeth82](http://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/pseuds/andibeth82) for beta!

There isn’t an ambush waiting on the other side, at least not that Natasha can tell. 

Everything stays eerily quiet and routine as they file out of the plane, the crush and jostle of the airport fraying Natasha’s nerves even further. Clint stays uncharacteristically close by her side, bumping shoulders with her periodically. It probably isn’t the most prudent way to travel, says the voice of paranoia at the back of her mind, but she can’t bring herself to give up the peculiar sense of comfort in it, and she has the feeling that he won’t be so quick to lose that either. 

She can’t shake the feeling that everything is too easy as they make their way through customs, two stamps for two fake passports, ink still drying as Natasha shoves hers back into her bag. She says nothing to Clint as she veers off toward the most crowded restroom she can find, but he seems to get the idea because he doesn’t follow. 

In the dubious security of the bathroom stall, she ditches her current gauzy tanktop, exchanging it for an unobtrusive gray t-shirt and black jacket, then swaps sandals in favor of boots. More functional, and less likely to stand out here. In New York, she’d wanted her alter ego to make an impression, to project apathy and a certain amount of naive entitlement. Here she simply wants to disappear. Natasha pulls the locks of her dark wig up into a messy bun, then peels the digital mesh from her face. It leaves her feeling exposed in a way that sets off alarm bells, but the batteries that power the thing are already in the red, and she can’t risk a malfunction in public. She’ll just have to trust the rest of her disguise to do its job, the way she has so many times before. The discarded clothes go back into her bag--also a gamble of sorts, but she can’t afford to have a piece of abandoned luggage alerting security, causing them to swarm this area. 

It takes her a moment to spot Clint when she emerges again, though she’s expected him to have changed clothes too. She knows how to find him, knows to search for his peculiar stillness in a crowd. He’s standing with his back to the far wall, his eyes scanning the corridor as he eats something from paper takeout bag. He’s exchanged his earlier outfit for more familiar jeans and a dark blue sweater, though he’s kept the glasses. 

“Sandwich?” he asks, holding out the bag when she comes to stand beside him, shoulder to shoulder. 

“We need to keep moving,” she insists, ignoring it for a moment, the knot of apprehension in her stomach far too tight to consider any sort of food remotely appetizing. He’s right, though, strategically. It’s already been hours since either one of them has had anything to eat, and there’s no way to know what might be waiting at the coordinates Maria’s given them. Knowing Fury, it’s equally likely to be a well-furnished safehouse or a gaping black hole. 

“Come on,” Clint says more gently, as if following her thoughts. He pulls a cardboard takeout cup from the bag, somehow having managed to balance it. “I got you tea?”

Natasha swallows and nods as she accepts it from him along with the proffered sandwich, suddenly feeling a profound rush of relief that she isn’t doing this on her own. It lasts all of one minute before her doubts catch up again, but it’s there all the same.

* * *

They take a taxi from the airport, riding mostly in silence under a cloud-filled sky, the air outside feeling far too chilly for May. It’s been a few months since Natasha’s been overseas, though she was involved in the London op after Thor and the aliens’ most recent appearance. Funny, she thinks, how the greatest threats still seem to always come from within, from the people she’s dared to trust rather than from the heavens above. 

After an hour, they stop in front of a little cafe, wait for the cab crawl away into the horizon before walking a few blocks away from the center of town. Natasha watches Clint’s hands shake as he hotwires an old sedan behind a deserted-looking church. She doesn’t comment on his choice or on the way he fumbles, just exhales silently when he gets the job done and they can be off again. Her own nerves are shot to hell at this point, but she isn’t about to let him know that. 

The tracker on her phone brings them to the edge of an industrial district that looks more dead than alive. It’s well after sunset as Clint finally pulls up to the coordinates, and at first glance the building in front of them is nothing more than a dark monolith rising up out of the shadows. There’s no trace of life here, no signs of any sort of recent activity, and Natasha feels the ever-present knot in the pit of her stomach tighten again painfully.

“Fury couldn’t have picked a nice old mansion?” asks Clint, digging through one of their bags until he unearths two pairs of the glasses Maria’s sent with them. They’re standard-issue S.H.I.E.L.D. gear--or used to be, anyway--with tinted lenses that look to be designed exclusively as sun protection, save for the little switch that turns on a night vision mode. 

Natasha shrugs, grabbing the free pair and slipping them on, though she knows it’ll look bizarre, will blow their cover as casual tourists. If they’re being watched, their presence here has already been detected. Might as well be able to see for a fight. “You know how he is. Likes to make statements.” She can’t quite conceal the bitterness in her voice, but Clint doesn’t comment.

“And this statement is what?” he asks, climbing out of their stolen car and closing the door with a level of care that seems almost absurd, given the circumstances. “He wishes he could be living in an actual cave?”

Natasha ignores him, quickly strapping on her belt and checking her guns in their holsters before she steps out of the car. Clint already has his quiver strapped to his back, bow in hand. With any amount of luck, they won’t need their weapons here, will simply manage a successfully uneventful rendezvous. She hasn’t had any amount of luck lately, though, and has never been one to count on it anyway.

The building is condemned, she realizes as they get close enough for her to make out more detail in the green haze of the glasses. It’s nothing more than the shell of an abandoned factory building, all of the windows broken and spidery graffiti covering the paint. There’s no lock on the heavy door, and it sends an echoing groan through the belly of the building when Natasha pulls it open. If she believed in ghosts, this place would surely be haunted.

A strange feeling of melancholy washes over her as she steps inside, though the glasses don’t allow her to see more than a few yards in any direction. She glances down at her phone, which isn’t detecting any sort of activity inside the building, though that doesn’t necessarily mean anything with Nick Fury.

“Nothing,” she whispers to Clint, who’s standing at her left shoulder now. 

“Split up?” he asks quietly, and for a moment she feels a fresh flare of apprehension at that suggestion. 

She is not going to give in to paranoia, though, she decides. She is not going to lose her trust in him. She’s just seen firsthand how destructive that can be, and Clint’s done nothing to deserve her suspicion. Besides, the place is too large to realistically explore together; it would be a waste of resources, make them unnecessarily vulnerable. 

“Meet back at the door in thirty,” she whispers into the darkness, and senses more than sees as he takes off. 

Natasha crosses the main room in a few paces, determining that at least this quadrant of it is empty. She has a bad feeling about staying out in the open too long, though there’s no rational reason for it. She pushes her way into the nearest side room, the door opening with another dusty _clank_ , and a disturbed bat takes flight with a flurry of wings. 

The room looks like it might once have been an office space, papers still spread across the abandoned desks, ink bleeding and manilla folders warping with moisture. She can practically feel the presence of workers still here, of the despair that must have come with the slow death of this place. Stripped wires cover the floor, grabbing at her pant legs, and the remains of a cigarette are still sitting on the edge of an ash tray. 

The sound of a single heavy footstep is all the warning she gets when the attack comes. Natasha spins instinctively, poised to land a knee in her assailant’s gut. The man dodges easily, though, rolling as if the floor isn’t covered in debris and attempting to grab her ankle. She lets him, going down gracefully and allowing her weight to pull her free before getting up again. It’s clumsy going in the dark, though, her attacker’s eyes better-adjusted than her own. He’s quick, hitting her with an elbow to the ribs before she manages to get her guard up again, catching his right arm this time and twisting it until she feels joints pop, tendons beginning to tear. He lets out a grunt of pain, and only then does she register his face -- _Clint’s_ face, but unmistakably filled with malice, with the single objective of her death. 

For a moment she freezes, nausea rising in the back of her throat. _It can’t be_ , her heartbeat thunders. _It can’t be, it can’t be, it can’t be._ Only last time it was, last time it _was_ real, was every nightmare she’s ever had. 

She lets her reflexes carry her through the next motion, gets her hands around his throat, crushing his larynx as she slams his back against the crumbling wall, pieces of the ceiling raining down around them. Her attacker has Clint’s face, but not his quiver, she realizes suddenly. Not his bow, nor the clothes he was wearing just moments before. 

It’s another trap, she thinks. It has to be. The alternative doesn’t make sense, only fits on the edges of her dreams. This is HYDRA, after all. Not magic. Not any sort of god. Still she hesitates for a long moment, watching the man with Clint’s face struggle, watching the life leave his eyes as he chokes. She could be wrong. She could be making the worst mistake of her life. 

Natasha forces those thoughts down as she lets go with one hand, grabs her gun and shoots. Then she watches as the man with her partner’s face slides to the floor, a bloody hole between his eyes. 

“Clint!” she calls out, her voice echoing through the wreckage of the building as she turns and breaks into a run, suddenly desperate to hear his response. It’s probably a mistake, she realizes, giving away her position like that. There’s no way she can be subtle about her movements, though, her boots crushing the remains of furniture and other debris as she moves through the main room again in the darkness, frantically searching for him. Her heel sinks clear through the rotting floorboards and she pitches forward, narrowly managing to catch herself before going down completely. 

She forces herself to go still, then, to listen to her surroundings, read the environment. Now that she’s stopped running, stopped creating a racket of her own, she can hear the sounds of another fight a few rooms over. Her heart pounds in her temples as she starts moving again, her chest painfully tight from equal parts exertion and terror. She forces herself to move slowly, as silently as possible; no need to give away her tactical advantage again.

It feels like an eternity before she arrives at the doorway, catches sight of Clint-- _her_ Clint, she desperately hopes--fighting an assailant of his own. Just one, she’s relieved to see, but there’s something off about the way he’s moving, something too restrained. He ought to be able to take one person much more easily, and he isn’t fighting with his bow. She doesn’t allow herself to think about the possibility that he’s injured--or worse--just raises her gun and fires off one neat shot, hitting the other man squarely in the back of the skull. His body slumps to the ground with the sound of dead weight falling, and Clint spins to face her, the horror in his eyes matching her own.

“You hurt?” she asks, crossing the room quickly. There’s no other sign of movement as far as she can tell, no hint of an imminent attack, but her heartrate hasn’t slowed yet, the adrenaline hasn’t stopped flowing.

“Tasha?” Clint breathes, and the odd look of wonder in his eyes as she closes the distance between them makes her stomach twist with its familiarity. For one terrible moment she’s back on the Helicarrier again, back to wondering whether she might have lost him forever. She refuses to contemplate that, though, refuses to consider that his grasp on reality might be slipping, that what happened in the other room was anything other than a HYDRA ambush.

“It’s me,” she says firmly, resting a hand on his arm as she comes to a stop less than a foot in front of him. Night vision doesn’t afford her much in the way of detail, but she doesn’t miss the way he’s shaking, the uncharacteristically hoarse edge to the sound of his breathing. She can’t see any injuries, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.

“It had your face,” says Clint, cocking his head toward the body on the floor, his voice breaking. “It had--It was you. And I--I couldn’t--”

It feels like a punch to the gut, the way he’s looking at her, the guilt she still hears in his words. All the pieces fall into place, though--they’ve tried the same illusion that they used on her, only in reverse. Which means that HYDRA is definitely aware of Clint’s involvement now, aware of exactly how to exploit their partnership for maximum emotional impact. This could be devastating, she thinks, if they don’t figure out how to be prepared for it, and quickly.

“A mask,” she says firmly, stepping into his personal space and resting a hand against his cheek. “Just like mine. You know the tech.” 

He nods once, makes a soft, broken sound at her touch, and she pulls away abruptly. He’s far too close to the edge already, and as much as it hurts her, she _cannot_ afford to have him come apart here, now. 

“Fury isn’t here,” says Natasha, schooling her face back into neutrality, into the distance she needs to work. “We have to get out, now. Just hold on until we can get somewhere safe, okay? Just a little longer.”

She doesn’t wait for him to respond, just turns and starts walking, trying to place her feet as deliberately as possible on the treacherous floor. Clint moves in a rush, cutting her off and taking hold of her shoulders, swallowing her protest as he kisses her soundly for one breathless moment. Then he falls away again, becomes an obedient shadow moving beside her on the way out of the ruins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feedback makes my week! :)


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to [andibeth82](http://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/pseuds/andibeth82) for beta and [mahenry424](http://archiveofourown.org/users/mahenry424/pseuds/mahenry424) for cheerleading!

The main door of the old factory puts up a fight when Natasha goes to open it again, and for a moment she has the terrible sense that they’re trapped in here, that HYDRA has managed some sort of barricade on the entrance while they were distracted. They’ve been careless to enter together, she thinks in hindsight, though it isn’t as if they have a lot of options. 

It’s strange, after what once felt like a lifetime of adapting to working alone, how much she’s come to depend on others. Now, even a partner feels like minimal support; she finds herself missing the option of calling for backup or calling for evac, of knowing that anyone at all would know or care if she died. 

“Stuck?” asks Clint, when her first three attempts at opening the door have failed.

“Or blocked,” she whispers, though any attempt at stealth is probably pointless now. HYDRA appears to have anticipated their arrival here, and her gunfire has left no question as to their position for anyone still on their trail.

“Move,” says Clint, giving her barely a moment’s warning to step out of the way before he throws his full weight against the door. It gives a little at the first push, and finally swings outward on the second. 

Nothing but eerie silence follows, though Natasha keeps her guns raised as she slowly moves outside. Somehow, the night feels even darker when they emerge, and a harsh wind is beginning to kick up, sending dry leaves and pieces of trash skittering across the ground like tiny creatures. 

“Door must have blown shut,” says Clint, though he sounds about as confident as Natasha feels.

“Let’s go,” she tells him, instead of wasting time on her doubts. The car is still there, at least, and a quick scan with her phone doesn’t seem to indicate any sort of tampering or ambush. They’ll have to chance trusting the read-out, since there aren’t a lot of other transportation options at the moment. 

Clint doesn’t protest as she takes the driver’s side, and she’s painfully aware of the way he’s shaking, even in the low visibility as she hotwires the car again. Her heart hammers in her throat as she steps down on the gas pedal and pulls away from the building, forcing herself to move slowly through the empty streets, resisting the urge to simply flee as fast as physically possible.

* * *

They change vehicles twice more, finally ending up in an ancient white truck with dusty black fingerprints on the door handles, a crumpled dent in its side, and a bumper that’s hanging on for dear life. Natasha drives the most erratic route she can manage, riddled with switchbacks and circles, though she can’t shake the feeling that they’re being followed, or that they’ve been sold out somehow. Nick Fury and Maria Hill are the last two people she wants to doubt, and she knows they’ve just demonstrated their integrity in the fight against HYDRA, but she can’t quite swallow down the last lingering threads of suspicion, the sense that they aren’t sharing everything they know, or everything _she_ needs to know.

It’s nearly dawn by the time she pulls into the lot of a slightly dilapidated motel, the sort of place where she thinks they have just as much chance of contracting some disgusting illness from the sheets as of being ambushed by their enemies. She’s too exhausted to drive any more, though, and knows she’s reached her limits for the moment. The sky is still heavy with the clouds that have been threatening since their arrival on English soil, and the first few cold raindrops begin to fall as they step out of the car and make their way up the walk, bags in tow, prepared with a story of a vacation gone wrong.

“I’m going to shower,” says Clint, as soon as they get to their room, not waiting for a reply before heading straight into the bathroom. 

There was a time when she would have joined him without a second thought, she thinks, but today the click of the lock is hardly a surprise. He’s avoiding talking about what’s happened, about his failure to keep his wits about him, to defeat the assailant who very well might have killed him had she not managed to find him when she did. Then again, she was the one who told him to keep his emotions in check at the factory, she reminds herself, so she can’t exactly fault him for trying to do exactly that. 

Natasha eyes the room for a long moment, taking stock: bed, with threadbare comforter and stains of dubious nature; writing desk and accompanying chair, with broken leg; ancient television that plays picture covered in snowy static when she switches it on experimentally. She tests the remote--suspiciously sticky--then unplugs the whole contraption. Not likely to be bugged, given that she doubts anyone’s put that much effort into this room in the past decade, but not worth the chance. Another quick sweep with her phone’s scanner reveals nothing of apparent danger, but this time she isn’t going to satisfy herself with that alone. She’s too wired to sleep anyway, so she conducts her own search of the room, stripping the bed and searching under the mattress, then crawling under the desk to check it as well. If there’s an advantage to the painful lack of amenities, it’s the fact that there are fewer hiding places. She ends her routine by checking the integrity of the door’s locks--decidedly lacking--before pulling a little device from her bag and dialing in the activation code. It’s a nice piece of Stark Tech employed by S.H.I.E.L.D. the past two years, a tiny field security bot that drills itself into door and adjacent wall--not impenetrable, but definitely annoying to remove for anyone without the proper release information. 

Clint comes out of the bathroom, a towel slung around his hips, just in time to watch it burrow its way into the thin wood. He blinks, then shakes his head. “Guess I missed a few things.”

“A few,” she echoes, unable to help the edge of bitterness in her voice. He looks more composed, more focused as he re-dresses, choosing not to comment on the sight of the bare mattress. Natasha half expects him to drop off to sleep on it--he’s always had a knack for grabbing strategic rest in the field, but he looks as every bit as uncomfortable as she feels, pacing the short distance of the room like he’s waiting for some unknown sign.

Natasha sits on the edge of the mattress, watching him, as if her own stillness might be able to balance out his anxiously frenetic movements. 

“So the question is, did Fury leave before our friends arrived, or are they responsible for his absence?” She doesn’t mention the third possibility, that he’s the one who’s misled them in the first place.

“That’s the sixty-four thousand dollar question,” Clint agrees, managing to say exactly nothing actually useful. 

“They may know he isn’t dead,” says Natasha, forcing her irritation down again. Picking a fight with him is of no strategic value, satisfying though it might be. “Pierce saw him alive. And anyone with a half decent S.H.I.E.L.D. clearance would be aware that it would have taken two alpha level agents to pull off the info dump. Doesn’t take too much to connect the dots.”

“Knowing he’s alive and locating him are two very different things,” says Clint, a reminder that he’s always had more faith in people than she has. “Wouldn’t want finding Fury to be my job.”

“But we don’t know what he was doing here,” Natasha counters. “Beyond tracking down the HYDRA rats. He wanted me to come with him. I didn’t. For all we know, he tried to take out a cell on his own. Failed. Gave away his position.”

“Sure,” Clint replies, “and we could assume five or six other entirely random things, too. The point is, we _don’t_ know. My money’s always on Fury holding his own.”

“So what do you suggest we do?” asks Natasha, still angry, though she can’t put her finger on why his response is so infuriating. It isn’t so different from their usual dynamic; they’ve always been their best in opposition, balancing each other’s extremes. “Sit around and wait for them to come after us, then ask very nicely if they know where to find Fury?”

He sighs, and she can almost see his conscious decision not to take the bait. “We find out where those guys came from. We find the HYDRA base here, we find Fury--either because they’ve got him, or because he’s looking for them too.” He pauses, coming to rest in front of her. “But first we should sleep. Restock our supplies, too.”

He’s right, she knows. She’s being entirely irrational about this, allowing her emotions to interfere with her judgment in a way she hasn’t since her early days with S.H.I.E.L.D. It’s strange how feeling untethered has brought that recklessness back so quickly, how suddenly she feels like scarcely more than the frightened child he brought in years ago. She’s always prided herself on feeling indifferent to structure, impervious to loyalties, but suddenly all of that seems like nothing more than a pleasant lie. 

“Fine,” she breathes, because she knows he’s right, and her own adrenaline is beginning to ebb, the strange heaviness of her body letting her know how tired she truly is. “But I don’t trust this place.”

“I’ll keep watch,” Clint says quickly, sitting on the edge of the bed beside her. “You can sleep for a few hours. Then we’ll switch.”

“When was the last time you slept?” asks Natasha, though she isn’t inclined to argue too hard. “Really slept, not dozed off in the car.”

He shrugs. “You need it more than I do right now.”

_Liar,_ thinks Natasha, but she says nothing, stretching out on the bare mattress without bothering to retrieve the sheets. The rain is coming down harder now, the smell of wet earth seeping in through the thin walls and the poorly-sealed windows, a peal of thunder rattling the building. She shivers, feeling small and exposed more than cold.

“Come here,” says Clint, the mattress dipping as he rolls onto it beside her, holding out an arm. 

For a moment she just studies him, tries to decide what he’ll do if she refuses. That stubbornness is a product of the anger and suspicion she’s been fighting since losing S.H.I.E.L.D., though, another piece of her old shell she’s worked so hard to shed. Taking a breath, she turns over and curls into him, allowing the warmth of his body and the weight of his hand on her back to slowly ease the tension from her muscles.

* * *

It’s dark again when Natasha wakes in a panic, disoriented and unsure what’s disturbed her. Her heart is thundering against her ribs, and she gropes reflexively for the gun that’s still holstered on her hip. The room is quiet, though the rain is pounding down outside, making it difficult to truly hear anything. The bed is empty beside her, she realizes a moment later, and she swallows down a curse as she searches the darkness, trying not to let her thoughts move to worst-case scenarios.

“Clint,” she breathes, when she catches sight of him, a flash of lightning from the lingering storm illuminating the room for a moment. 

He’s sitting on the floor beneath the window, in the middle of the pile of discarded sheets she made earlier, his back hunched and his knees drawn up to his chest, his whole body shaking almost convulsively. This isn’t an attack on their room, she realizes, quickly recognizing his look of all-consuming terror as her eyes adjust to the dim glow of the security light outside. He must have fallen asleep accidentally, then awoken her in his hurry to get out of the bed, to flee the grip of yet another nightmare. Slowly she eases the safety back on before setting her gun on the bed, telegraphing her movements as she lowers herself to the floor beside him.

“Hey,” she says softly, not reaching out to touch him yet. “Bad dream, yeah?” It’s been two years, but the memories of Loki’s hold on him, of watching him wake in terror every few hours, haven’t faded.

He nods desolately. “Fuck. _Fuck._ ”

“The same?” she asks carefully.

“Yes,” he manages, though his voice is strained. “Always the same. We’re in bed, and I--I kill you. _Every fucking night, Natasha._ ”

“That’s why you’ve been avoiding sleep,” she says evenly, resting a hand on his arm. She isn’t ready to let go of her anger at him, the hurt of having him simply disappear from her life, but she wants nothing more than to comfort him in this moment. 

Clint nods again, choking down a sob at the contact. “I thought--if I left, maybe it would go away. Maybe if I couldn’t hurt you, it wouldn’t mean anything. But I _did_ hurt you, and he’s still in my fucking head.”

“Come here,” says Natasha, an echo of his earlier words. She wraps an arm around his shoulders, draws him down against her as he starts to cry in earnest, his breath hot against the side of her neck. He fists his hands in her shirt and holds on like she’s his only anchor in the midst of freefall. 

“It had your face,” he gasps, thinking of the factory again, of HYDRA’s ambush. “I thought--thought if you were fighting me, he must be back. I must be gone.”

“Not going to happen,” she says firmly, not about to admit that the same thoughts crossed her mind for a moment, when the attack came, when the man trying to take her life wore his face. Instead she just holds onto him, fingers tracing a soothing pattern on his back as he cries himself out, his breathing gradually slowing as he comes back to reality.

“I’m sorry,” he says, when he can speak again. “I’m--I love you. I do.”

“I’m getting really tired of everyone thinking they should do everything on their own,” she answers, though he can’t know the full reality of that statement, can’t know everything she’s just been through, because she hasn’t told him. 

Clint opens his mouth to respond, then jumps as Natasha’s phone buzzes unexpectedly on the bed. She scrambles to her feet to grab it, suddenly on edge again. Hill is the only person who ought to have this number, but the source of the text message blinking on her screen doesn’t appear to be from Stark or the remnants of S.H.I.E.L.D.

_Turn on the news,_ it reads, with no further information.

Natasha ought to know better, she thinks, ought to suspect this as some sort of trap, some sort of diversion. She’s on her feet before she’s had a chance to think better of it, though, plugging the decrepit old television back in and scanning channels until she finds a news broadcast. It takes her a moment to make out the image through the static, but when she finally does, it nearly brings her to her knees.

The feed shows a Capitol Hill briefing room roped off in crime scene tape, the text crawl at the bottom of the screen declaring ‘Witnesses Report: Black Widow Murders to Derail Investigation.’ Only then does she realize the bodies in the middle of the room are the same men who questioned her less than two weeks ago, now pale corpses with their throats cut. 

On the far wall, the HYDRA crest leers down on the scene, drawn in bold strokes of the victims’ arterial blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Comments make my week. :)


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to [andibeth82](http://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/pseuds/andibeth82) for cheerleading and beta, and to [mahenry424](http://archiveofourown.org/users/mahenry424/pseuds/mahenry424) for helping me tame my plot monster.

Natasha loses track of time as she stands paralyzed, the minutes ticking by feeling like an eternity as the newscast continues, witnesses testifying to having watched the whole thing, having watched her bleed the life from these foolishly naive men. They’ve only been trying to do their jobs, she thinks--only been trying to pick up the pieces along with the rest of her world. She might have resented their questioning, but they’ve done absolutely nothing to warrant this fate. 

She isn’t sure how long she’s been there, holding her breath, when the television screen goes dark and the room suddenly becomes unbearably quiet, save for the storm still raging outside. She jumps at the sudden interruption, turning to find Clint standing over her shoulder, the remote in his hand. She doesn’t remember dropping it, but she must have, too focused on the world’s latest betrayal. 

“Natasha,” Clint says cautiously, telegraphing his movements as he steps between her and the television set. “Natasha, you with me?”

She can scarcely make out his face in the dark room, the outside security lights once again the only illumination now that the television is off. He seems calmer, though – steadier, able to push down the aftershocks of his nightmare, to focus the way he always has in a crisis. 

“Yes,” she grits out, because there isn’t a damn thing wrong with her orientation. She almost wishes for a moment that she might be able to slip into memory, to get lost in her past as she used to rather than facing this present and future. That won’t do any good, though, she knows. She’s never been able to outrun her demons, and gave up long ago on even trying. “Yes, I hear you.”

“Those men,” says Clint, his voice still carefully measured. He’s treating her like the time bomb she hasn’t been in years, and it only adds to her anger, makes her want to grab him and shake him, makes her _want_ to scare him to justify his behavior.

“What?” Natasha asks sharply, aware in the dimly rational parts of her mind that he’s trying to help, that his steadiness is exactly what she’s missed so terribly in the past two years. “Spit it out, Clint.”

“You didn’t kill them, did you?” he asks, but there’s just enough uncertainty in his voice to make her realize that he does wonder, that he actually believes there might be some possibility that this isn’t all a lie and isn’t simply slander. 

She doesn’t think any more after that, just reacts out of pure instinct, anger spurring her forward. Stepping past him without a response, she scoops up her phone and her gun, deciding that she can sacrifice the other contents of her bag, that they’ll only be extra weight, anyway. She makes it all the way to the door in the span of a few seconds, is prepared to walk out and never look back when she tugs at the knob and belatedly remembers the little lock bot she applied before settling here. It’s still dug firmly into the wood frame, its titanium claws not about to let her make such a hasty escape.

“Fuck,” she huffs, fumbling to punch in the release code in the darkness. Red lights flare to life on the back of the bot, telling her that she’s gotten it wrong, that she’ll have two more tries before the self-destruct mechanism is activated and the whole thing goes molten, effectively making it impossible to remove without heavy equipment. “Fuck, _fuck_.”

“Natasha,” says Clint, a few feet behind her again. He knows better than to try to touch her, knows better than to get too close, and she hates him for it, _hates_ him for knowing every nuance of her soul, yet still being so fundamentally wrong. “Natasha, stop. Talk to me.”

She ignores him, jabbing at the bot again, and then slams her palm against the wall when it blinks red for the second time. The rest of the world and the last of her reservations seem to drain away, until there’s nothing left but the voices of the news anchors, of the tabloid headlines, the accusing empty-eyed stare of the men her image has murdered. There’s nothing left but the searing rage, the need to get _away_ from it all. She gives up on the release code, then, takes half a step back before spinning and landing a kick against the wood of the door, which gives a little with a sickening crunch. 

“Natasha!” Clint says sharply, and then his hands close like a vise around her upper arms, dragging her backward, away from her fight. 

He doesn’t give her another chance to struggle, uses the advantage of the darkness and the bulk of his body to trap her in a head lock, refusing to let go as she fights him reflexively.

“God dammit, Natasha,” he pants, steering her back toward the bed. “Stop. _Stop_. You talk to me rationally and I’ll let you do whatever you want, but I am not letting you get yourself killed!”

“I would never,” she growls, giving up her resistance as he shifts their weight, pinning her firmly to the bed. “You _actually think_ I might have murdered innocents? _Fuck_ you, Clint, I would _never._ ”

“I know that,” he grates, his voice close to her ear and his breath hot against her neck. “I _know_ that. But how do I know they were innocents? How do I have a fucking _clue_ what’s going on here when you won’t talk to me?”

The wave of her anger crests and breaks on his words, on the hurt in his own voice as he struggles to stay calm, his whole body shaking again as he presses against her. A sob slips from her throat as she reaches out, this time to hold onto him, to stop her own descent into madness, into the despair she’s been trying to outrun since S.H.I.E.L.D. crumbled around her. 

“Hey,” breathes Clint, shifting his weight so he can wrap his arms around her again, pulling her in so that her head is cradled against his chest. “Hey, it’s okay. I’ve got you.”

Natasha has the fleeting instinctive thought that he’s just dropped his guard at the first show of weakness from her, that for all he knows, this could be an elaborate ruse or a diversion. In this position, she could put a knee in his gut and be out the window before he managed to catch his breath. But she would never, _could_ never, and he knows that just as well as she does. 

Clint says nothing for a long while, just holds on quiet and solid as ever while she chokes on bitter sobs for the second time in a week. Weakness like this will get her killed, insists the voice in the back of her mind, but she shoves it stubbornly down, is simply beyond caring in this moment. 

“Talk to me,” he says again, when she’s begun to move toward calm. “What just happened?”

She hesitates for a moment longer, letting herself feel the foolish comfort of his fingers in her hair, and the familiar smell of soap on his skin. 

“Everything is gone,” she says finally, honestly. Speaking the words aloud for the first time grants them a peculiar finality that she realizes she’s been avoiding, the weight of revelations settling on her shoulders. She allows herself to think again of all the good she’s tried to do, all the times she’s put her life on the line to try and settle her score. All the jobs she’s done blindly in the name of justice, now suddenly called into question.

Clint nods once, his voice muffled into her hair when he speaks. “I’m--I want to be here. If you’ll let me.”

Natasha takes a shaky breath and swallows down a fresh surge of anger at that. She isn’t sure she’ll ever stop being furious over his disappearance, but right now there are things she wants more than the satisfaction of punishing him further. “You still haven’t told me where you went. Not really. You told me why, but there’s more and we both know it.”

He sighs heavily, shifting a little so that his arm rests more securely around her shoulders. More for his benefit than her own, she thinks, but she doesn’t question it. 

“I really did go back to Iowa,” he says finally, twining his fingers into her hair almost thoughtlessly. “Tried to be alone as much as possible, where I couldn’t hurt anyone if--Where I couldn’t hurt anyone. Did some day labor on the farm. Drove a truck for a while. Lots of time to think, you know? But I couldn’t--I wasn’t sleeping. I haven’t slept in two years, Natasha. Was barely hanging on as it was, and then when I heard about S.H.I.E.L.D. on the radio--” 

“What?” she asks, as soon as he breaks off. “You what?”

He shakes his head, his voice barely audible when he speaks again. “I lost it. Panicked. Crashed the rig into a ditch and just—took off.”

“And now you’re here,” says Natasha, “and you want—what, to pick up where we left off?”

“Or—Or somewhere?” he says uncertainly. “I want to be with you. Please. All I ever wanted was to keep you safe.”

Natasha takes a deep breath, bites her lip and makes a decision. “You’re an idiot, thinking it was a good idea to do any of this alone. You’re an idiot and you could have killed people.”

He swallows audibly. “I know. Fuck, I know.”

“And if you ever disappear like that again, we’re done.” She plows ahead, ignoring him. “No discussions. No second chances. Done.” As if it will ever be that simple, she thinks. As if she would ever truly be able to escape him. 

“But now?” he asks, the tiny desperate thread of hope in his tone hitting her like a punch to the gut. 

“Now you’d better not make me regret this,” she growls. “But I love you.”

Clint makes a noise that’s part laughter and part strangled sob, moving to rest his head on her shoulder, his own breathing rough. For a moment Natasha allows herself to just hold on, tries to let the reality of this sink in, tries to let go of the sense of freefall. 

“What now?” she asks, finally, when she can’t ignore the reality of the larger situation any longer, can’t ignore the threat of the news report they’ve just watched.

“We stick to the plan,” says Clint, surprising her with the speed of his response. “You call in some favors with your contacts. Get us a tip on where to find HYDRA. We need to find Fury, and we need to strike back at them either way, right? They’re trying to bait you with the publicity. Don’t take it.”

She considers for a moment, then nods again. 

“Wouldn’t be the first time someone’s been gunning for you,” says Clint, his tone oddly reassuring. “And I’ve still got your back.”

Natasha rolls her eyes, though she knows he can’t really see in the darkness. “Charming.”

“My middle name,” says Clint. He rests a rough palm against the side of her face, the pad of his thumb brushing along the line of her cheekbone as he leans in to kiss her almost shyly.

* * *

Natasha might be loath to admit it, but the truth is that her web of contacts has shrunk dramatically since she joined S.H.I.E.L.D. Ironically enough, it turns out that the intelligence community isn’t so crazy about sharing turf with an organization that’s tried to bring its specialty under government regulation. Especially not in light of recent events.

As it stands, it takes thirty-six hours to call in the favor, to find someone who can be persuaded into responding, and to travel to the coordinates provided. She spends the time trying to find some sort of center again, trying to regain the calm she’s found in all her best moments, the distance that makes her mind her best weapon--when she can keep it in her control, at least. 

The location of their meeting turns out to be an old public library, rundown and all but abandoned, though the shelves are full as ever, weighed down by dusty yellowed volumes that don’t appear to have seen daylight in the past decade. Natasha inhales the scent of oxidizing paper as they step into the cool air and tries to furtively gauge how many civilians are around, how many people might get hurt if things go to hell again. It’s an old habit now, one she remembers learning from Clint upon joining S.H.I.E.L.D., upon making the decision to uphold some sort of moral code. Not many patrons here in the middle of a weekday afternoon. Probably for the best, she decides. Clint looks uncomfortable, like he’s missing some piece of the secret code to fitting in here, and Natasha finds herself resisting the urge to lay a hand on his arm, to identify herself as his protector. 

Lee Meecham--an alias, Natasha is fairly certain, though she’s never expended the effort to pursue his true identity--is a plump little man, the top of his head coming even with her nose when he’s drawn up to his full height. He has graying sandy blond hair and perpetually rounded cheeks that have always reminded Natasha of a hamster. She knows him as a dealer of secrets, and first became aware of his unique merchandise during the lost span of time between escaping from her makers and being found by S.H.I.E.L.D. He’s also been the only one to answer her attempts to call in favors this round, though he’s far from her first choice. 

Today she catches sight of him as he comes around the corner of a particularly tall stack of books, which she realizes belatedly is obscuring some sort of door to a staff area, an unseen hallway. 

“Natasha!” he exclaims, voice bouncing off every nearby hard surface, the volume making her stomach clench with instant apprehension. They haven’t exchanged services often, but in their few encounters thus far, she has always known him as a man of discretion. 

Something is wrong here, she knows immediately, though she can’t pinpoint the threat, can’t process everything fast enough. Clint sees it too, she can tell by the instant taut line of his shoulders as he takes a step closer to her, poised for action.

“Natasha,” Meecham beams. “You’ll be so pleased. You wanted intel on the location of the nearest HYDRA agents, and I’ve brought them directly to you!”

Natasha swears under her breath as she finally catches sight of movement in the shadows, black-clad gunmen surrounding them, weapons raised.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to [andibeth82](http://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/pseuds/andibeth82) for beta!
> 
> Note: This chapter features more violence than previous ones, although I still don't think it's more graphic than in-canon scenes. Your mileage may vary. It also borrows a very minor plot point from last week's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. episode.

There are at least five HYDRA agents surrounding them, and Natasha has no idea how many more might still be hiding in the back rooms, out of her line of sight. 

The periphery of the library is flanked by tall shelves filled by thick old volumes, the middle space occupied by tables holding computers that look at least two decades out of time. The place has at least emptied out, the few civilian patrons evidently sensing danger and thinking better of hanging around to watch. The possibilities for HYDRA attack are endless, though, and that’s more unsettling than anything else. She’s been careless, has been far too passive in awaiting this meeting, has failed to thoroughly scan the place for hidden dangers or potential exits. 

And that’s the problem, really--She’s spent the last two weeks living too far in the present, worrying possible worst case scenarios and missed the threats right in front of her eyes. Natasha has never been much for anxiety before, has always lived solidly in the present moment, but lately she’s haunted by uncertainty, drowning in indecision. It’s going to be the death of her if she doesn’t get it under control, doesn’t get her mind back in the game.

“Awesome!” Clint exclaims, breaking the wall of silence that seems to have formed inside Natasha’s head. “I’ve been getting really tired of having nothing to shoot.”

She almost jumps at the sound of his voice, is surprised to see him grinning when she glances over her shoulder. It’s a bluff, she knows--he’s been reeling since the warehouse, or really since he appeared on her couch two weeks ago. But it’s a welcome one all the same, jarring her out of her own head long enough to act, to get her fingers around the handle of one of the little throwing knives she has concealed in her belt.

“Right,” Natasha says dryly, keeping her eyes trained on Meecham, because she wants to keep his attention, wants to prevent him from tracking her movements too closely. “You’ve been extremely helpful. Really, saved us so much time.”

Clint makes the first move with a lightning-fast grab for his bow, has it extended and an arrow loosed almost too quickly for Natasha to process. The arrow takes the gun right out of the nearest soldier’s hands, the man’s noise of shocked pain echoing through the library as he cradles his impaled palm reflexively. 

It feels as though everyone springs into action at once, then, two of the other men opening fire as Clint ducks behind one of the tall shelves, using the heavy wooden frame and the books for cover. Meecham makes a run for the door, which figures--he’s never been a fighter, and he’ll have made sure to be paid before any real threat of confrontation. 

“Cover me,” Natasha barks to Clint, deciding immediately that he can’t be allowed to escape. She doesn’t let herself think twice as she turns her back on the gunmen, throws her knife and watches it slice through the air, burying itself in the top of Meecham’s left foot.

He shouts a curse and stops immediately, narrowly avoids tumbling forward by grabbing onto the top of a nearby table, and bends to survey the damage. Natasha blocks out the sound of more gunfire behind her as she closes the distance between them at a sprint, sweeping Meecham’s legs before he’s had a chance to recover. 

He collapses in a heap on the floor, but he’s still conscious, still has the potential to be a complication in this fight. For a moment she entertains the thought of simply shooting him, making him pay for his betrayal with his life. He’s too valuable an asset, though, has an endless wealth of secrets, which she desperately needs right now. Natasha settles for a solid kick to the temple, watching as he slumps to the floor. She glances back over her shoulder at the fight before stooping and quickly binding his wrists and ankles.

Clint’s managed to take out two more HYDRA agents when she turns back, their black-clad bodies like pools of particularly dense shadow on the floor. There are still two men left, advancing slowly across the obstacle-filled room, using the shelves and tables as cover the same as Clint. 

Natasha keeps low to the ground as she moves back toward him, taking a half-hearted shot at the nearer of the two soldiers. It misses, which she’s expected, but has the effect of making the man fall back for a moment, temporarily losing his line of sight. 

“Meecham?” Clint hisses as she comes to rest beside him. He’s got an arrow trained on the other agent, is in the process of aiming it through a small gap in the books. 

“Not going anywhere,” says Natasha. “For now.” She falls silent, watching as he makes his shot, neatly attaching a taser arrow to the goon’s forehead, right between the eyes. He convulses visibly for a moment before falling to the ground, utterly still.

“Four down,” says Clint, dialing another combination into the handpiece on his bow, waiting for his quiver to fashion the arrowhead. 

Natasha spares a moment to wonder how he’s managed to keep his equipment working so well over the past two years, without the support of S.H.I.E.L.D. or even Stark, when he’s barely been able to make ends meet for himself. Then again, he’s always prized his bow above all else; sometimes she thinks he’d rather die than be forced to function for any length of time without it.

“One to go,” she finishes his thought a moment later, though she can’t shake the feeling that this has all been far too easy, that there must be another complication yet to rear its ugly head. “You see any others?”

“No,” says Clint, plucking the finished arrow from his quiver and quickly nocking it. “But I wouldn’t plan on sticking around too long.” 

She can tell by the tension in his jaw that he’s had the same thought, the same concern for a secondary attack. Surely HYDRA will have known better than to send only five men, armed with nothing more strategic than guns. She thinks again of the Winter Soldier, of the implications of Steve’s thus-far fruitless search, then forces her thoughts back to the present moment. No way to defend against an unseen adversary, against a hypothetical. 

Clint goes silent for the space of another breath as he aims, then fires, the last guy going down with a cry and a crackle of electricity from the arrowhead. 

“Easy,” says Clint, though he doesn’t retract his bow as he turns to meet her eyes at last. Natasha can’t quite read him, though she also can’t deny the swell of relief she feels at the fact that he’s managed to take out all their attackers on his own, that through everything else, he’s still completely capable of guarding her back.

“We have to get Meecham out of here,” says Natasha, still keeping an eye on the room for any sign of movement. “I need information from him.” She has the distinct sense that they are still in danger, that something worse is coming, and she doesn’t want to be around to find out what it is.

“That a request?” asks Clint, cocking his head in the direction of Meecham’s still-prone form, now dead weight they’ll have to maneuver out of here somehow. 

Not ideal, thinks Natasha, cursing their lack of backup, their lack of resources, for the umpteenth time. It’s been a long while since she’s worked as a free agent, and she’s gotten spoiled in the meantime. 

“That an offer?” she returns, giving him a little smile. 

“You go find us a vehicle,” says Clint, “and I’ll package up one rat, takeout style.”

* * *

If ever there was a time to call for extraction, or for additional support, if ever there was a time to make use of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s scanning and location tech, this would be it. But those things don’t exist anymore, and Natasha silently loathes HYDRA for the inconvenience. Doesn’t hurt to add one more item to their tally of atrocities, she figures, and this is just the latest way they’ve managed to ruin her day.

She’s working on hotwiring the most nondescript SUV she’s been able to find in the parking lot--which is far too empty for her taste--when Clint emerges from a back door of the library, Meecham’s body hoisted over one shoulder like a sack of potatoes. 

“Hold on,” he calls out, crossing the parking lot casually, like he’s not carrying the man they’re in the process of kidnapping.   
Natasha gets to her feet and steps out of the car, facing Clint. 

He pulls open the back door of the SUV and roughly deposits Meecham’s body horizontally before dropping a key into her palm.“Try this. Pretty sure this old clunker belongs to the coward himself.”

She hesitates for a moment, wondering whether Meecham would have predicted this turn of events, whether this might be some sort of trap. Probably not, she decides, because Meecham’s ego would supersede that kind of caution. He’s never been a real strategist in the years she’s known him, and the alternatives will slow them down too much to risk. Sliding back into the driver’s seat, she slips the key in and turns the ignition, relaxing the slightest bit as the vehicle comes to life.

“Thanks,” she offers, as Clint climbs into the passenger seat.

He nods, and Natasha pulls out, holding her breath as the library retreats in the rearview mirror. Their escape appears to be clean, though she still can’t quite bring herself to believe it, still can’t quite swallow down the dread that’s tightening the pit of her stomach. She drives north first, and then west as the sun sinks lower on the horizon. Meecham hasn’t stirred yet in the back seat, and she wonders whether she’s somehow hit him harder than intended, hopes he’ll be capable of giving her the information she needs. Maybe it would have been prudent to take one of the HYDRA agents as well, but logistics are not on their side these days.

She doesn’t stop until they reach the outskirts of the city, another district that time seems to have forgotten, the store fronts dilapidated and dark as evening arrives in full force. Natasha has been here before, vaguely remembers it from her days before S.H.I.E.L.D. The building at the end of the street once served as a station on the Underground, but it’s sealed off now, the subterranean space perfect for an interrogation--assuming it’s still deserted. 

Clint straightens as she pulls up to the curb, prepared to get down to business.

* * *

The station is quiet and dark as Natasha remembers, utterly devoid of life save for the colony of bats that are disturbed by her entrance, taking flight in a whirlwind of activity, their wings stirring up the smell of mildew. She’s wearing the night vision glasses again, or else she’d be operating blind, though they bring back unpleasant memories of the warehouse, of being taken utterly by surprise before. She glances over her shoulder at Clint, who’s carrying Meecham’s still-prone form behind her. He’s started to make some noises, the sort of loud, groaning breaths that Natasha has learned mean consciousness will follow shortly.

She pauses to survey the main part of the tunnel, now sealed off from the active parts of the line, what used to be the track now obscured by rotting garbage, the walls cracked and slowly crumbling around them. There’s a bench near one end of the of the track, where people must once have sat to to await the train. It looks sturdy enough, the metal impervious to the decay around it.

“Put him down there,” she instructs, pointing for Clint. She knows he must be thinking of the factory too, must be fearing another attack of deception, but he doesn’t question her, just sets down Meecham’s dead weight, his head lolling backward at an angle that will probably hurt when he awakens. 

Natasha sets the bag of supplies she’s brought down on the bench with a _thunk_ that reverberates through the empty space, and causes Meecham to snuffle again in a way that indicates he’s beginning to be able to hear. Good, since she doesn’t want to stay here too long, doesn’t want to stop moving for any particular length of time. She uses another two zip ties to quickly bind his wrists and ankles to the structure of the bench, which is a nice sturdy thing, unlikely to give way even if he struggles. 

Taking a little bottle of ammonia from her pocket, she pours a few drops onto a handful of tissues, glancing regretfully at Clint for a moment. She knows he’s always preferred not to witness this part of her work, has always needed the ability to hold firm to the element of justice in their missions, let the hazier shades of gray stay out of his sight. It’s not like he’s unaware, though, and not like they have a choice right now. 

Grabbing a handful of Meecham’s hair, Natasha pulls his neck straight upright before passing the tissues under his nose, letting him breathe in the fumes. He stiffens in her grasp almost instantly, grunting as he instinctively tries to flee, his shoulderblades hitting the back of the bench and the ties at his wrists pulling his weight back down forcefully. 

He blinks up at Natasha for a moment, comprehension slowly dawning, though without any night vision tech of his own, he must be utterly blind. “ _You_ \--You’re supposed to be dead.”

“Really?” asks Clint, his voice thick with feigned disappointment. “Clearly you don’t know her very well if you think a few guys with guns are enough to take her out.” His willingness to participate in this interrogation is a little surprising, but Natasha isn’t going to complain, isn’t going to take the time to analyze.

“He doesn’t,” she agrees conversationally, her grip still tight on Meecham’s hair. His scalp must be burning by now, but he doesn’t seem to have noticed on top of everything else happening to him. “He fancies himself the ultimate dealer in secrets, but he doesn’t have any of mine. Apparently he’s well-acquainted with our HYDRA friends, though.” She turns back to Meecham at that, letting him feel the weight of her gaze even if he can’t see her face. “Right?”

“No,” he stammers, clearly afraid, and not masking it well at all. “No, you misunderstand. It’s not like that.”

“Really.” Natasha jerks his head back further, leans over so he can feel her breath on his face. “You’re telling me you didn’t sell us out to a higher bidder? Because the fact that you think _you’re_ going to play _me_ right now is really just insulting, Lee.”

Meecham swallows convulsively in the darkness, a sickeningly wet sound. “What do you want?”

“Simple,” says Natasha, wondering whether he really might buy in so easily. He isn’t a trained agent, after all, isn’t accustomed to finding himself in tight spots like this. “I want to know how you’re communicating with HYDRA. And how I can do it too.”

“No,” he protests, his breath catching again, though he apparently isn’t ready to crack just yet. “No, I can’t do that. You know I always protect my sources, Natasha. I can arrange a meeting, if you’d like?”

Clint scoffs. “Right. Like you protected us when you arranged this one. Super helpful, how could I possibly forget.”

“Okay,” says Natasha, letting go of his hair so abruptly that his head falls forward before he manages to dizzily right himself. “I’m bored of asking nicely.” 

“You were pretty polite,” says Clint, “considering.”

She takes a length of wire from her bag and snakes it around Meecham’s throat, pulling it tight, ends crossed, so that it cuts into the flesh of his neck, compressing his airway. He struggles for breath immediately, sputtering and coughing as he panics in a way that will only make this worse for him.

“Anytime you’re ready to tell me,” says Natasha, wondering just what HYDRA’s paid Meecham--or threatened him with--to make him so willing to keep their secrets. He’s never been a man of loyalty, as far as she knows.

Still he shakes his head, his face reddening noticeably even in the monochrome world of night vision, and Natasha begins to wonder if he knows the game she’s playing, might actually be prepared to wait her out and lose consciousness again.

“Fine,” she decides, losing her patience as time ticks by and her concern over being tracked here grows. “You don’t want to talk yet, I’ll give you a little more incentive.” 

She shifts the wire to her left hand alone, using her right to activate one of the hidden buttons on her gauntlet. It releases a small pulse of electricity when she flexes her wrist, crackling blue in the darkness as it crawls down the metallic surface to hit Meecham in the neck. He screams roughly as the shock runs through his body--not enough to knock him out, but certainly potent enough to hurt like hell. She flexes twice more, watching the blue fingers of light reach out to sting him before she pauses again. 

“They’re using S.H.I.E.L.D.!” he relents at last, gasping for breath as he tries to force the words out. 

Natasha rewards him with a little slack on the wire, hopes it will encourage him to spit the information out. “Using S.H.I.E.L.D. how? S.H.I.E.L.D. is gone.”

“But the comms are still active,” Meecham pants. “They’re using the frequencies--really the noise between frequencies. Using it to transmit coordinates, other intel. That’s how I told them about you.” He slumps forward again, apparently exhausted.

Natasha gives him a cold little smile. “Thank you for your cooperation.” She cuts the ties on his wrists and ankles, then gives him another left hook to the temple, watching him crumple onto the bench before turning back to Clint. “Let’s go.”

“Go where?” asks Clint, showing no reaction to what he’s just watched. His jaw is set with the grim determination to keep moving forward.

“We need to access S.H.I.E.L.D. frequencies, right?” says Natasha. “So we find a safehouse, use the equipment there. Maybe restock on some supplies if we’re lucky.”

He nods once. “You’re going to leave him here?”

Natasha shrugs. “He’ll find his way out eventually.”

Clint gives a sick laugh. “It _is_ a fitting hideout for a rat.” 

He waits for her to pass him before following her back out into the world.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, I want to apologize for such sporadic updates. I was so much better at consistent multichapter updates before grad school devoured my soul! That said, I am going to give it my all to have weekly updates on Thursday/Friday from here on out. (Fair warning: This is the busiest semester of my life, so it may not always be possible, but I am really going to try.) Also, I'm incredibly grateful to everyone who's been commenting. I hate being the needy writer begging for feedback, but the honest truth is that my favorite part of writing fic is creating something that other people can enjoy. So telling me you enjoyed it makes my day/week. Thank you! :)

The safehouse they choose is a shabby apartment above an old, boarded-up restaurant that closed its doors more than a year ago. S.H.I.E.L.D. always loved spaces like this, all but invisible to the outside world, taken for granted countless times every day despite existing in the middle of a very public street. 

The retinal scanner and biometric locks will be defunct, Natasha knows, because even if this place is entirely untouched, the servers which once fed them information will be dead. Failing a positive match with the database, the safehouse security systems are fit with a self-destruct mechanism, not so noticeable as an explosion, but plenty dangerous enough with the release of nerve gas designed to incapacitate any interloper for a long enough interval to be investigated. She bypasses the scanner altogether and instead feels her way along the wall until she detects the slight indentation of the hidden access panel. Pulling a knife from her belt, she cuts through the dingy wallpaper and pulls, exposing the tiny digital interface, fortunately still active.

“Any luck?” asks Clint, reminding her of his presence behind her, bow in hand, fingers hovering over his quiver, ready to act instantly should any threat present itself.

“No problem,” she says, offering him a small smile over her shoulder as she feels some semblance of confidence bloom in her chest for the first time in days. She’s intimately familiar with hacking S.H.I.E.L.D.’s safehouse doors--in fact, it was one of her signatures during her relatively brief stint as a free agent, before Clint had caught up and offered her a new allegiance, a new home.

“Still haven’t managed to best you,” Clint agrees as the lock clicks open, the interface screen now caught in an endless loop of code. 

Natasha does her best to cover the panel back up with the damaged wallpaper before kicking the door open with a creak. It’ll still be noticeable to anyone looking closely, still a risk, but so is everything they do these days.

Inside, the apartment is dark and a little musty, the damp seeping in from outside in the absence of regular climate control. She does a futile sweep for bugs, for other security threats, though the tech left behind here by S.H.I.E.L.D. will be liability enough. 

Clint spends a few minutes fiddling with the thermostat before giving up and shrugging in her direction. “Busted. Pretty much beyond hope.”

“It’s okay,” she says with a sigh. It isn’t the most comfortable place she’s ever stayed, but it’s not the worst by a long shot either. “At least it’s solid shelter. And it’s not too cold outside. We’ll be fine.”

He nods once, curtly, apparently having had the same thought. “You find the comm array on your hunt?”

“In the bedroom,” says Natasha, with a sad little smile at the familiarity of it all--at once comforting and painful, like looking at a final photo of a lost loved one. “Disguised as a weather radio. You know Tech always liked that trick.”

Clint mirrors her expression, swallowing visibly. “You want to go see if you can get it running? I’ll make coffee.” He gestures to the small bag of supplies they’ve stopped to buy, once they’d gotten enough distance from the tunnel where they’d left Meecham. 

“Only if you make tea for me,” she replies, injecting as much levity into her voice as she can manage, though even she doesn’t believe it. 

“I wouldn’t dare forget,” says Clint, and Natasha doesn’t doubt it for a moment. He’s always been better at caring for her than she’s been for herself.

* * *

Back in the bedroom, Natasha decides on a shower before working on the tech. The dankness of the tunnel seems to be coating her skin; the past hours have left her feeling unclean for reasons beyond the strictly physical. 

The mirror in the bathroom is flecked with corrosion, and she finds herself avoiding her reflection for reasons she doesn’t really want to contemplate. There’s still working water, by some small miracle, though the shower runs rust-colored for a good solid minute after she turns it on. Eventually, it clears and she decides these are far from the worst amenities she’s ever had in the field, though she can’t deny the sense of freefall, the carefully-contained panic at the thought that she has no real home anymore, no point of return when this is all over.

Clint is still out in the living room when she emerges, taking a suspiciously long time for coffee and tea, but she decides not to investigate yet. Instead she dresses quickly, and sits on the edge of the bed, turning her attention back to the task at hand. 

It isn’t hard to get the communications array activated again, or to tap into the S.H.I.E.L.D. frequencies, which are still active but now unnervingly silent save for the static HYDRA has allegedly been using to transmit messages. It’s a bit eerie, almost like listening to the howling of ghosts, like walking through the empty hallways of an abandoned home. 

Digging through her bag of quickly dwindling tools, she pulls out another one of the burner phones Hill’s sent along from New York. There are two more after this, and Natasha decides that she doesn’t want to think about what they’ll do for tech when they’ve been forced to abandon or destroy all of their current inventory. She’s become so dependent on this kind of support, she realizes--it’s been nearly a decade since she was truly on her own, scavenging and stealing for the things that would keep her alive. 

Shoving those thoughts back down, she powers on the phone and dials in the code to activate the hidden part of it, the software designed to monitor for and break encoded signals. It’s a rather basic cipher, but with a small amount of luck, HYDRA won’t be using a very sophisticated encryption because they’ll be assuming nobody’s listening to this frequency anyway. It would fit their MO, their propensity for hiding in plain sight. That’s something they’ve always had in common with S.H.I.E.L.D., thinks Natasha. 

Clint comes in just as she’s finished her setup, making her wonder for a moment how he’s managed to time his entrance so perfectly. 

“Hi,” he says quietly, setting a fragrant mug of tea down on the bedside table before sitting beside her and taking a sip from his own. He casts a glance at the comm array, which is still emitting nothing but static. “Sounds like it could use a snowy television to go with it. You know, like a bad horror movie.”

Natasha raises an eyebrow, reaching for her tea and wrapping her hands around the warm porcelain. “Because everything about this situation isn’t scary enough for you?”

He blows out a heavy breath, taking another sip of coffee and swallowing visibly before setting the mug down and turning to face her. “Not really, no.”

She feels an immediate surge of anger at that, the irrational resentment she’s been harboring toward him since he reappeared in her life. “And what is that supposed to mean?”

He stays silent for a long moment, the muscle just above his jaw jumping, belying his sense of calm. He’s always been unsettlingly good at reading her, must be able to tell now that she’s upset, even if she doesn’t entirely understand it herself.

“It means I’ve seen worse,” he says finally, meeting her eyes cautiously.

“You mean Loki?” she asks, noticing how he doesn’t flinch at the name anymore, doesn’t react at all visibly, though she’s willing to bet from his response to the masked attacker at the warehouse that he isn’t as unaffected as he’d like her to believe. “Loki was worse?”

“I mean me,” he says quietly, looking away again. “I mean--knowing the things I’m capable of doing when I’m not in control.”

Natasha bites her lip as irritation blooms into rage in her chest. It’s too much--the fact that he’s _still_ hostage to this line of thinking after two years, that it’s torn them apart so completely, that he seems to be missing the gravity of everything that’s happening now. 

“We’ve been over this, Clint. If you weren’t in control, then it’s not about what you’re capable of doing. You aren’t the one responsible.” She regrets the harshness of the words almost immediately, though she isn’t finished wanting to hammer the sentiment into his skull.

“No?” he asks, his voice hard-edged now. “That line of reasoning make _you_ feel any better? I seem to remember that it didn’t. Not when I brought you in. Not later, either. You’ve always been about earning redemption, right? So why are you so opposed of me doing the same?”

She pauses, a little taken aback at the fervor in his voice. “Because I don’t want that for you,” she says finally, the anger fading to a bitter mix of sadness and exhaustion. “Because I would give anything if someone could take that away from me. If I could believe it.”

Clint laughs darkly. “Yeah, that’s the problem, isn’t it? Believing.”

“Or believing the wrong thing,” says Natasha, setting her mug down beside his, her stomach tight with all the emotions she’s been trying so hard to compartmentalize. 

He nods, meeting her eyes again. “Tell me.”

He already knows, she thinks, or ought to know. Yet she still finds herself reluctant to speak the words, the confession, aloud, as if the truth hasn’t already been strewn across the internet, across televisions, and radio airwaves for days.

“Tell me,” Clint repeats, the quiet insistence in his voice rapidly cutting through her doubts, reminding her of the outright earnestness that’s made her unable to resist him from the beginning.

“You know,” Natasha says bitterly. She finds herself suddenly unable to be still, drawing her legs up onto the edge of the bed and stretching out, as if the softness of her posture might somehow be able to blunt the pain of what she’s about to say. “You’ve seen the news. I know you’ve read the reports. It’s not just about starting over, or about HYDRA trying to frame me. It’s not about what the public thinks. It’s the fact that the public is _right_. Not only have I not made up for anything, but--How much more harm have I done? How many innocent people have I killed in the name of good?”

He nods again, moving with her to hold her gaze. “They took away your choice again.”

“No,” says Natasha, surprising herself. Hearing him say those words makes it all suddenly clear, allows her to finally shake the truth from the maelstrom of thoughts that’s been raging in the back of her mind since Zola’s revelation. “ _I_ took away my choice. I followed orders. I let other people tell me the difference between right and wrong. I always thought it was safer that way, that maybe I couldn’t make the correct judgment on my own. Always thought you were a little crazy, questioning authority all the time.” She smiles ruefully. “You’ve always known more about being your own person.”

“Natasha,” he says softly, reaching out to touch her cheek, his fingers trembling slightly. “You remember what I told you the first time you felt this way?”

She laughs, the sound catching painfully in her throat. “You told me to make different choices. To choose to do good things. But it--It turns out, I never chose at all.”

“Not my point,” says Clint. “My advice doesn’t change. You don’t like the things you’ve done, choose different ones. Choose now. Because you _do_ know what’s right. You’ve shown me that every day I’ve known you.”

“Sap,” says Natasha, her voice still ragged around the edges.

He grins, a fleeting glint of the old, familiar humor flashing in his eyes as he carefully climbs over her to stretch out on the other side of the bed. “Guilty. But you--You have always been worth saving, Natasha.”

She rolls her eyes against the dangerous tide of emotions his promises have always stirred in her, trying to hold onto the fact that his presence in her life no longer feels like a guarantee, that he could be gone again tomorrow, just like before. But she turns onto her side, facing him despite herself, the strange grief sharp in her chest. “It was nice, you know. Having a home, for a while. Laying down roots.”

“Now who’s the sap?” Clint teases. He slips an arm around her shoulders, his breath warm as he leans in to kiss the side of her neck.

“You,” she insists, smiling a little despite herself. She curls into his side, resting an arm around his waist, feeling the undeniable tension in his body now that she’s so close. “Nothing left to do but wait. When was the last time you got any real sleep?”

He shrugs. “Not high on my list of priorities.”

“Yeah, well, you’re going to get some now,” says Natasha. “Because I need you to be sharp.”

He raises an eyebrow and cocks his head toward the comm array. “Drifting off to a HYDRA lullaby?”

“Yes.” She shifts closer, like she might be able to shield him from his nightmares with her presence alone.

“We’ll make our own home,” he says suddenly, yawning despite himself. “I’ll buy you an island and build you a castle.”

“Not helping the sap argument,” says Natasha, curling her fingers into his hair. 

He says nothing in reply, turning his face in against her shoulder as his breathing evens out.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may not be able to do another update in exactly the next week (I know, I know) because I'm going out of town. But I hope this very long chapter will tide you over until then. :) Thanks, as always, to everyone who's given me feedback and support.

HYDRA is stationed in the heart of London, only a few miles from the airport where their time here began, from the site of their tense walk through customs. 

If she’s reading the intercepted signals correctly--a larger question than Natasha would really like to consider at the moment--then the local operations center is hidden behind the facade of a corporate office, purporting to specialize in nanorobotics. The building itself isn’t quite a skyscraper at six stories high, but it still cuts an imposing silhouette, the outside covered in sleek glass. It has the latest in window technology, designed to function as one-way mirrors, reflecting the landscape back to the external world while offering a crystal clear view from inside the building. 

Fitting, thinks Natasha, as Clint parks their latest borrowed vehicle a few blocks down from the entrance. The thought of being watched by infinite eyes inside of the glistening buildings makes the knot of adrenaline in her stomach tighten, though it isn’t as if she’s expected to arrive undetected. Trick windows or not, HYDRA is sure to have recon on the environment outside its base. Natasha doesn’t like the fact that they’re going in blind, especially not when HYDRA’s been a step ahead of them all along so far. But they don’t have a choice, as far as she can see--They only have each other, and this fight is all or none.

“Start at the bottom,” says Natasha. They’ve been over this plan a handful of times already, yet she feels compelled to do it again, as if that might somehow increase their chances. “Clear each floor before working upward. We stop when we get to the top, or when we find Fury.”

“Ready?” asks Clint, clearly humoring her, though she has the feeling that he already knows the answer. He’s always had a need to talk in the field, to state things explicitly though they’ve been able to read each other for years without any words at all.

“Sure,” says Natasha, checking the guns and ammo in her belt. They’ve raided all the supplies left in the safehouse, which has given them a fairly significant arsenal of weapons, as well as pieces of kevlar body armor. Still, she feels oddly exposed without a line to S.H.I.E.L.D., with the knowledge that if she dies today, she will be branded nothing more than a terrorist, will forever lose the chance to make anything right.

“What is it?” asks Clint, because of course he isn’t fooled by her response, of course he’s seen straight through her bravado. 

She takes a breath, trying to swallow down the feeling. But she owes him the truth, she thinks, owes him the choice. “Going in there right now--Is this suicide, Clint?”

But he just shakes his head, trying to smile. “Us against the hordes of drones?” he jokes, the mirth in his tone failing to reach his eyes. “It’ll be just like New York all over again.”

“Oh,” Natasha says wryly. “Great. That makes me feel much better.”

“Hey.” Clint turns sideways in the driver’s seat, resting a hand on her forearm. “Following you has never been a mistake, okay? I trust you. If the past few weeks have said anything, I think the message is that it’s time to start trusting yourself.”

Natasha inhales slowly, the apprehension gradually receding. “Really? Never? Does that mean you’re going to stop complaining about Iquitos?”

“Never,” says Clint, turning away and reaching into the backseat for his quiver.

* * *

Minutes later, Clint pulls open the door, revealing the inside of the building for the first time. The interior is an unnervingly sterile mix of white tile and chrome, the fluorescent lights an odd bluish hue that makes the entire place feel as though it might be illuminated by a giant computer monitor.

“Nanotech,” Clint reads from a sign above the reception desk that greets them immediately as they both step over the threshold. “Not very original, is it? I mean, what is the point of naming a business exactly what it does?”

“May I help you?” asks the woman behind the desk, her smile and tone a practiced mask of cool courtesy. Maybe even a literal one, thinks Natasha.

“Sure,” says Clint, and there’s still an edge of mocking in his voice. “Maybe you could tell me, what’s the benefits package here like? Does HYDRA offer dental? Because I always really thought S.H.I.E.L.D. skimped in that department.”

Natasha scarcely gets a split second’s warning, recognizes the woman’s intent to move in the slight hardening of her gaze, an instant before she reaches for the gun at her hip, blocked from view by the surface of the desk. Natasha already has her own weapon out, manages to shoot before the other woman’s had the chance to get a finger on the trigger.

It still isn’t quite fast enough, though, and the receptionist ducks behind the desk, evidently hitting some sort of panic switch that starts up a shrill alarm, undoubtedly alerting every agent in the building to their presence. For a moment, Natasha is struck by the sheer blistering sensation of the sound, splitting pain shooting through her eardrums, her teeth rattling together. She’s focused through worse, though, and she forces her mind back onto their objective as she tries to let the physical discomfort fall away.

Clint has his bow out now, has already taken out the woman at the desk, plus two other agents who have come rushing up on one side. The room behind the reception area is a labyrinth of cubicles, and Natasha motions for Clint to take the left side as she sets off on the right. This floor is clearly intended to be seen by the public, a conveniently plausible front consisting of office space, sleek computer monitors and men in khaki pants with button-down shirts. Cutting-edge, but benign. She doesn’t allow herself to consider the possibility that any of these people might be innocent as she shoots two in the head, catches a third around the throat and delivers a powerful blast of electricity from her gauntlet, watching his eyes roll back in his head before he slumps heavily to the floor. She can’t afford that sort of doubt right now; it will get her killed.

Most of the cubicles are empty, she notes, as she gets closer to the center of the room. She hasn’t observed any sort of rush toward other parts of the building, so either HYDRA keeps this floor habitually understaffed, or they’ve anticipated an attack, are waiting somewhere else in preparation. She doesn’t really have time to consider the implications of either possibility, but she files the thought away for later.

Reaching the back wall yields an important discovery: a stairwell in the far corner and a bank of elevators in the closer one. Natasha scans the area behind her quickly, takes out another agent who’s attempting to aim at her head. There’s no more movement after that, nothing but the screaming of the alarm. Still, she counts off a full minute before taking a chance and turning away toward the elevators.

The more they can limit movement through the building, the better chance they’ll have at getting out of here alive, so she rips open the access panel, pulls a chip from her belt and slips it into one of the ports. The standard S.H.I.E.L.D. version of this device contains a virus designed to shut down control systems. Natasha is willing to bet that HYDRA will have anticipated that, though, so she’s modified this one to be a little smarter, a little more malicious than the usual. She counts forty-two seconds before the call buttons light up solid gold, and one of the elevator carriages lands with a resounding crash, evidently having fallen from several floors up. She exhales slowly, begins to consider for the first time that this op might actually work out something like the way they’ve planned. 

A moment later, Clint comes up to stand at her shoulder, his hands steady as he holds his bow at the ready.

“Room’s clear,” he mouths, though she can’t make out his voice over the sound of the alarm.

She nods, motions to the stairs, then leads the way up toward the next floor. The second level opens onto a long hallway, sirens still blaring. They’re met a few yards in by two agents, but again Natasha finds herself surprised by how easily they go down, by the fact that she and Clint have yet to be overwhelmed by a sheer crowd of HYDRA goons. Apprehension begins to take root in the pit of her stomach again, and she decides that they can’t afford to keep moving as slowly as they have on the ground floor. For all they know, HYDRA is prepared to sacrifice this facility and all of its personnel, could easily have rigged the whole place to blow. That risk grows exponentially the further they get from the ground, but there’s nothing to be done about that now; they’ve already made the decision to go all-in.

Turning a corner at the end of the hall reveals even more cubicles, some of them inhabited. They still have four more floors to search, thinks Natasha, and the risk of traps aside, she isn’t sure how long she can tolerate the volume of the alarm, or whether this spectacle might get the attention of local law enforcement, who could add considerably to the mess. Making a quick choice, she pulls out one of the I.C.E.R. grenades they’ve collected from the stash of weapons in the safehouse, fortunately replenished within the past several months. Clint takes her cue and does the same, heading off on the opposite side of the room again.

It only takes four grenades to have all the agents in the room out cold, firmly paralyzed for the next several hours. Clint grins when he meets her at the stairs again, looking more himself than she’s seen in days, but she can’t bring herself to celebrate. 

The sound of the alarm is deadened somewhat when they emerge onto the third floor, though that small relief seems only to make Natasha more aware of the way her head is pounding now. The design of the building, similar on the first two floors thus far, is noticeably different here, the lights brighter and the air cooler, the general aesthetic more utilitarian. They stand at the start of the new hallway for three minutes that feel like an eternity, weapons trained at the ready for the first sign of an attack. Everything remains perfectly still, though, and eventually she decides they have no choice but to push forward. If HYDRA’s trying to force a stalemate here, they’ve won through sheer virtue of her uncertainty. 

This floor houses a lab, she sees, as she and Clint turn the corner again to the place where the hallway opens up. Rather than cubicles, the room is open, workbenches framing the outer walls, shelving and computer stations filling the middle of the space. The first thing that occurs to her is how very unnerving it would be to work in a place like this, without any walls, seemingly designed specifically with invasive oversight in mind. The second is that the entire room is absolutely deserted, and looks like it has been for some time. None of the computers are turned on, none of the lab equipment is in use. From the looks of things, HYDRA really is using this facility to research nanotechnology, a fact that’s fairly alarming all on its own. Given more time, Natasha thinks the opportunity to go through some of these hard drives, to get a few glimpses of the data being generated here, would be invaluable. She senses they don’t have it, though, so she motions to Clint to keep going, resists the temptation to pocket the tiny USB drives she passes on the way. It would be far too easy for one of them to contain a tracker, or a toxin, or even an army of tiny nanobots that could infest her body, kill her from the inside out. 

The fourth floor is practically a carbon copy of the third, more lab space in the same configuration, and again eerily empty. Natasha slows her pace slightly as they near the door to the stairwell again, her instinctive sense of dread growing exponentially as the next attack fails to come. It seems increasingly likely that this is some sort of trap, that this building is either filling with hostile agents from below, or rigged to destruct when they reach the top. 

“Problem?” asks Clint, and they’ve finally gotten far enough away from the alarm that she can hear his voice, although he still has to shout to accomplish that. 

Natasha hesitates, giving a moment’s very real thought to the possibility of aborting their mission and turning back while it still seems they can. That would leave them at another dead end, though, still waiting for HYDRA to commit its next atrocity, and she decides that’s unacceptable.

“No,” she says finally, pulling open the stairwell door. 

When she steps through onto the fifth floor, all hell breaks loose. She’s met immediately by two agents who are both wearing Clint’s face, just like her mysterious attacker at the abandoned warehouse. Natasha feels as though the bottom’s dropped out of her stomach, her blood running icy and every instinct screaming at her to stop as she forces herself to raise her gun. Her real partners is still behind her, is wearing different clothes and is the only one here carrying a bow, she tells herself as she takes a shot at the closer of the two agents. Still it’s a shock watching her bullet bury itself between Clint’s eyes, watching his imposter fall lifelessly to the ground. For a moment she thinks she might faint, might vomit, but then the other agent is on her and she doesn’t have time to do anything but fight.

Natasha loses track of the rest of the room, her focus narrowing down to the assailant who’s chosen not to shoot, but to catch her in a headlock instead. She’s reacted a moment too slow, too caught up in visceral panic, the air being knocked from her lungs by the man’s strike to her gut. She jabs at his ribs with her elbow, kicks backward at his knees, trying to knock him off balance and use her body weight to bring him down. She doesn’t get the chance, though--the man slumps to the floor, an arrow between his eyes, the sudden loss of resistance nearly taking Natasha down with him. 

She turns over one shoulder to thank Clint, but doesn’t have time. Half a dozen more agents, all with his achingly familiar face, have already rushed up to replace the two they’ve managed to kill. Natasha switches her emotions off, then, finds the part of herself that has no heart, no thought, only deadly precise automaticity. She shoots the first two men, breaks the neck of a third under the sole of her boot. Three more get lethal shocks from her gauntlets, but they’ve already been replaced by two others. She puts a bullet in the one on the left at point-blank range, and knees the other in the gut, prepared to finish the job when her concentration is broken. 

“Natasha!” she hears from behind her, a cry frantic enough to get her attention despite the hurricane of violence engulfing her from all sides. 

She whirls, focusing on two men who have caught hold of a third, incapacitating him as one takes aim with a gun. It takes half a second longer than it should to register--that the man with the barrel to his head is wearing a quiver, is looking at her with desperate, terrified eyes. She’s lost track of the real Clint, has let this tactic succeed, so thrown by the shock of it that she’s failed to cover him, has been fighting only for herself. It feels as if time slows to a crawl, then, as if she’s outside of her own body, watching everything with crystal clarity. She shoots at Clint’s shoulder, praying the kevlar he’s wearing will catch the bullet. The force of the impact knocks him backward, away from the gun that’s been pressed to his head, the agent who’s been trapping his arms stumbling in surprise. 

Clint takes advantage of the distraction, wrenching free and grabbing an arrow from his quiver, sinking it into his attacker’s throat lightning-quick, as if it were a dagger. Natasha shoots down the final agents with the last two bullets in her clip, and then there’s nothing but stillness in the room, the sounds of their ragged breathing and the distant wailing of the alarm below. Slowly, Clint moves to retrieve his bow from the floor a few feet away.

“I’m sorry,” says Natasha, avoiding his gaze as she reloads her gun. 

“Hey,” Clint breathes, ignoring her sound of protest as he steps in to wrap an arm around her shoulders, holding on tightly, his breath warm on her temple as he kisses her forehead. “It’s okay. We’re okay.” 

He’s shaking almost convulsively against her, but she chooses to accept his words because they’re true for the moment, because she doesn’t have a choice. At this proximity, she can see her bullet gleaming near the surface of his body armor, which means it hasn’t penetrated far enough to do any real harm, although she knows he’ll have excruciating bruises in a few hours. 

“We have to keep moving,” Natasha says automatically, though she thinks she’ll come apart if there are more imposters on the final level of the building. 

By the time they reach the top of the last flight of stairs, the alarm is barely audible at all. This level is clearly a command center, the walls armored and soundproofed, the carpet extra plush. The center of the room is occupied by a huge communications array, a jungle of keyboards and view screens, chairs arranged in a semicircle, all of them empty. Natasha does a quick sweep of the room, searching for any sign of a trap, any clue to the purpose behind all of this.

“So what was the point?” she asks, when she’s failed to find anything. It doesn’t mean that there isn’t a bomb here, still waiting to go off, but she’s almost beginning to wish that if there is, it could hurry up and blow already. “They could have killed us here. They didn’t. Or haven’t yet.”

“Natasha,” Clint says, again from behind her. There’s a different kind of fear in his voice this time, a quieter one, but it makes her stomach lurch all the same. “Turn around.”

She moves slowly this time, the alarm in his voice doing nothing to prepare her for the sight that greets her. It takes a moment for her eyes to focus, for her to realize that one of the view screens has switched itself on, revealing the battered, bloodied body of Nick Fury. He’s barely conscious from the looks of things, suspended from the ceiling by a chain wrapped around both wrists. 

In the lower left corner of the screen, a set of coordinates blinks at Natasha like a taunt. In the right, a timer counts relentlessly toward zero.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, remember how I was going to try updating weekly? Yeah, that was a funny joke. I'm so sorry this took so long! I got buried under grad school and the holidays. But! Thank you so much to everyone who's stuck with me, and I hope you enjoy this chapter.

“Seventy two hours,” says Natasha, her gaze locked on the countdown at the bottom of the screen. It’s the key, she thinks, the determining factor in Fury’s survival. And it’s the only part of the image she can bring herself to contemplate; she’s spent enough of the past month haunted by the image of his face twisted in agony. “A little less.”

Clint just shakes his head. “Get the coordinates and let’s go. We’ve already been here too long.”

She’s surprised by the harshness of his tone for a moment, almost bitter. She doesn’t have time to consider further, though, realizes the cause of the sudden urgency she sees in his face. There are sirens in the distance, audible now even over the echoes of the alarm still wailing on the lower floors of the building. The sounds bleed together, making the sources impossible to count, but it isn’t a small number, she’s certain. Glancing back at the screen, she commits the coordinates to memory before turning away.

Clint has his back to her when she looks in his direction again, standing a few feet away from one of the windows. Close enough for him to see out, she thinks, but without much risk of being spotted from the street.

“How many?” Natasha asks, staying where she is. The last thing they need right now is to be taking unnecessary risks. 

“Surrounded,” says Clint, taking a few slow steps backward, closer to her. “Firemen and police. Full riot gear.”

“Figures,” she spits, swallowing down the immediate rush of anger at how futile an operation like this is for the police, how they ought to have been the ones storming this building in the first place, dealing with the threat hidden here. She’s certain she’s a suspected terrorist internationally, though, thanks to her own media dump and HYDRA’s frame job on Capitol Hill. 

“We can’t go down,” says Clint, glancing around the room. “Too many cops. And god knows what else our friends might have left to surprise us.”

Natasha nods, quickly reloading her guns and then holstering one, deciding that she’s more likely to need a hand free right now. “You thinking about the roof, then?”

“I’m thinking the roof is our best friend,” says Clint. “And I just spotted the stairs.” He points to the door in the far corner, on the opposite side of the room from the internal stairway, which is probably a point in their favor. The police will be focused on entering the building and setting up a ground perimeter; if they’re lucky, nobody will think to look up for a good while yet.

“Ready, then?” she asks, her adrenaline already beginning to crest again as she prepares to run. 

Clint gives her a silent thumbs up before dialing a new combination into his quiver in preparation. He’s lost more than a few arrows in their ascent through the building, won’t be able to reclaim them now, and it isn’t as though any safehouse they might come upon will have another supply. Natasha shoves that concern aside for the moment, instead setting off toward the exit.

The stairs lead straight up to the roof, which is blessedly flat, suspiciously like an emergency helipad. The day is stretching on toward late afternoon now, and the sun is an assault on her eyes, unprepared after so much time spent under fluorescent lights. 

“Makes you wish for a pair of really cool shades, right?” says Clint, coming to stand even with her shoulder. 

He looks almost as if he’s enjoying this, she thinks, though there’s just a bit too much force behind his levity, a tension in his humor that makes her suspect a front. She isn’t as adept at reading him as she once was; he’s a different person now, and so is she, in more ways than she has time to contemplate at the moment. 

“I’m fine,” says Natasha, aware that it probably isn’t the response he wants, isn’t playing along the way she might have in the past. “But we need to keep moving.”

Clint sighs and nods again, glancing around at the adjacent buildings. All offices in this sector of town, most with lots of windows. The two structures on either side are both close enough to reach with a little creativity.

“You want to flip a coin?” Clint asks.

She shakes her head, and decides on the building to their left. “That one. More options once we get there.” It has a visible fire escape down one side, and an alley with dumpsters which look like good cover, should things come to a fight on the ground.

“Okay,” he agrees, wincing as the sound of more sirens indicates the arrival of additional police units down below. Someone is bellowing into a megaphone, ordering the immediate evacuation of the building.

Natasha’s stomach threatens to turn at the thought of anyone getting ahold of the security footage she’s sure must now exist. The media will have a field day, she thinks, can already picture the headlines, the clips of her gunning down seemingly-innocent office workers. Suddenly she wishes she’d had the time and the resources for some sort of disguise, has grown unaccustomed to operating under the assumption that nobody will have her back, nobody will be there to clean up the mess when the job’s done. 

Forcing herself to focus only on the way forward, Natasha flexes the muscles of her right hand into the familiar activation pattern, presses one of the nearly invisible buttons on the inside of her gauntlet.

“On three,” she tells Clint, waiting for him to nock and draw before she mouths the countdown.

It’s one of the biggest acts of faith she’ll ever make, jumping as she fires off the grappling hook, no guarantee that it will find any sort of secure target at all. She feels a moment of panic at the sense of freefall, followed by immediate intense euphoria at the rush of the air around her, the thought that her fate is already determined, and nothing she can do will change it. An instant later, the hook catches solidly, and the wire goes taut, already working to retract itself. Natasha uses it to leverage herself up the last few feet, catching hold of the roof’s edge and pulling herself onto it. 

She’s still catching her breath when Clint lands next to her, and she can’t quite wipe the dumb grin off her face. 

He rolls his eyes, looking pale and slightly nauseated by the trip. “You enjoyed that way too much.”

“Come on,” says Natasha, grabbing his hand and helping him to his feet before cocking her head toward the fire escape on the other side of the building, a series of two narrow ladders which will put them within a viable distance of the dumpsters she spotted before. “No time for a break now.”

“Only you,” he pants, stowing his bow at his back, “would be so excited about jumping into the trash.”

Natasha ignores that barb, shrugging and smiling at him over her shoulder before she begins the final part of her descent.

* * *

Returning to the same safehouse feels reckless, in a way, but they don’t exactly have much choice. It’s yet another unpleasant reminder of their dwindling resources, their increasingly short list of allies. 

By the time they make it back to the building after an hour of changing vehicles and driving in circles, the sun is hanging lower on the horizon and Natasha’s nerves are dangerously frayed. The pleasant part of the adrenaline has faded, leaving her muscles feeling rubbery, oddly tight, though she’s making a conscious effort to relax. Her mind is filled with images of the ground rushing upward at her, of Fury’s battered body, of half a dozen agents wearing Clint’s face. He doesn’t look much better, if she’s honest, his jaw set in silent resolve, though he’s clearly favoring his shoulder as he moves.

“Clear,” says Natasha, completing her sweep of the place a few moments after stumbling in the door. In truth she should probably check more thoroughly, given the sort of traps HYDRA’s been laying for them all along the way, but Clint says nothing and she decides that she’s too tired, having too much trouble caring for her own safety.

Clint just nods wearily and makes his way straight into the bathroom, peeling off pieces of ruined kevlar as he goes. Natasha follows without a word, needing to keep him in her sights, to see for herself that he’s come through yet another fight mostly unscathed.

“Fuck,” she breathes, when he finally gets his shirt off, revealing deep purple bruises where she knows her bullet ploughed into his shoulder. They’re both lucky that it isn’t worse, all things considered, but the knowledge of what it must feel like, of the fact that he’s injured at all because of _her_ momentary distraction, sickens her.

Clint shrugs, meeting her eyes in the rust-flecked mirror. “Color suits me, don’t you think?”

Natasha swallows, trying to force down the rush of guilt she feels, the familiar regret over pain caused by her hand. “You should ice that.”

He raises an eyebrow. “With what?”

Natasha bites back a curse at the reminder of their isolation, the lack of even the simplest necessities to depend upon. She feels a fresh surge of irrational anger at that, at HYDRA, and S.H.I.E.L.D., and most of all herself. 

Clint doesn’t give her a chance to get any further, though, turning and wrapping an arm around her shoulders so that she’s trapped against the counter. She rocks up on her toes, kissing him roughly, almost a challenge. He groans into her mouth, a needy, guttural sound that might be equal parts pleasure and pain, trying clumsily to unzip the vest she’s wearing without breaking away from her entirely. Natasha shoves him back with an airy laugh, stripping quickly and efficiently out of her own clothes. 

“Pants off,” she orders him, when she’s finished, and waits for him to obey before kissing him again, her fingers pressing bruises into his arms as she hauls him closer.

“Hi,” he murmurs against her mouth, his voice ragged and his eyes dark. 

“Hi,” she echoes, reaching up to trace the bow of his lips with her thumb. His breath is hot against her skin, and suddenly the room around her is spinning just a little. “I love you.” 

Clint makes a noise that isn’t quite a growl, getting his hands under her and lifting her up to sit on the edge of the countertop. He fucks her like an act of rebellion, like every breath is a reminder that they are alive, that there will be another fight. Natasha buries her face against his shoulder when she comes, still not entirely ready to let him see the cracks in her armor. Clint slumps against her as he follows her over the edge, his breath coming in short, sharp gasps. She wraps her arms around his neck and holds on hard, aching for a moment at the immensity of hurt that feels enveloped in the air between them. 

“We need to keep moving,” says Natasha, when she can speak again. It’s becoming a mantra, one of the only things that’s kept her from falling apart entirely so far. Now they have more than vague speculation as to the consequences if they pause too long, though, allow themselves to become too distracted by their own needs. 

She will not have Fury’s blood on her hands, cannot cope with that kind of regret, that kind of guilt. Not with everything else she’s discovered about herself and her work, her standing on the lifelong mission she set for herself years ago. 

Clint nods curtly and moves away from her, quickly cleaning his injuries and going in search of clothes. Natasha does the same, the practiced routine of washing off sweat, blood, gunpowder, and ghosts almost a ritual, almost comforting. 

When she’s finished, she pulls out the second to last of the phones still stowed in her bag of supplies, easily their most valuable piece of tech. It only takes a few seconds to dial in the coordinates and confirm her suspicion.

“They’re in Paris,” she tells Clint, frowning. “If the message is to be believed, anyway.” It doesn’t make sense, she thinks, to choose a hiding place so nearby while providing an exact location and ample time for travel. Something doesn’t add up.

He raises an eyebrow. “Believe HYDRA?”

Natasha sighs. “What choice do we have?”

Clint takes a measured breath and rests a hand on her arm, his eyes searching hers for a moment. “You know this is a trap, right?”

“Absolutely.” Natasha sets her jaw. “That’s why we’re not going alone.”


End file.
